Previous Talks

Yassine Ait Brahim

Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Morocco

May 24, 2022

Speleothem based records of hydro-climate variability in Northwest Africa on orbital-millennial scales: Potential implications on pre-historic modern human populations

Paleoclimate information is still lacking in key regions to understand the functioning of some of the main components of Earth’s climate system. In NW Africa, the use of speleothems as a natural archive of past environmental and climate changes gained considerable interest in recent years. However, the published paleoclimate evidence in this region is still limited to the Holocene, whereas speleothems have a promising potential to span the past climate change throughout the Pleistocene with a high resolution.

In this presentation, we will talk about our published speleothem paleoclimate reconstructions that span the Holocene in Morocco, as well as our ongoing work and preliminary results during the last glacial cycle and throughout the Middle Pleistocene. We will highlight the advantage of using multi-proxy and high-resolution records in paleoclimate research and we will discuss the tug-of-war between the westerly winds belt and the African Monsoon in North Africa, the climate history of the Sahara, and the human-climate interactions across multiple timescales.