The coastline along the southern Arabian Gulf between Al Jubail, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Dubai, UAE, appears to have risen at least 125 m in the last 18,000 years. Dating and topographic surveying of paleo-dunes (43–53 ka), paleo-marine terraces (17–30 ka), and paleo-marine shorelines (3.3–5.5 ka) document a rapid, > 1 mm/a subsidence, followed by a 6 mm/a uplift that is decreasing with time. The mechanism causing this movement remains elusive but may be related to the translation of the coastal area through the backbasin to forebulge hinge line movement of the Arabian plate or, alternatively, by movement of the underlying Infracambrian-age Hormuz salt in response to sea-level changes associated with continental glaciation. Independent of the mechanism, rapid and episodic uplift may impact the design of engineering projects such as nuclear power plants, airports, and artificial islands as well as the interpretation of sedimentation and archeology of the area.

New data and a review of historiographic information from Neolithic sites of the Malaga and Algarve coasts (southern Iberian Peninsula) and from the Maghreb (North Africa) reveal the existence of a Neolithic settlement at least from 7.5 cal ka BP. The agricultural and pastoralist food producing economy of that population rapidly replaced the coastal economies of the Mesolithic populations. The timing of this population and economic turnover coincided with major changes in the continental and marine ecosystems, including upwelling intensity, sea-level changes and increased aridity in the Sahara and along the Iberian coast. These changes likely impacted the subsistence strategies of the Mesolithic populations along the Iberian seascapes and resulted in abandonments manifested as sedimentary hiatuses in some areas during the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition. The rapid expansion and area of dispersal of the early Neolithic traits suggest the use of marine technology. Different evidences for a Maghrebian origin for the first colonists have been summarized. The recognition of an early North-African Neolithic influence in Southern Iberia and the Maghreb is vital for understanding the appearance and development of the Neolithic in Western Europe. Our review suggests links between climate change, resource allocation, and population turnover.

We present detailed pollen and charcoal records from Lago Pichilafquén (~ 41°S) to decipher the effects of climate change and varying disturbance regimes on the composition and structure of the vegetation on the Andean foothills of northwestern Patagonia during the last 2600 yr. Here, temperate rainforests have dominated the landscape since 2600 cal yr BP with variations ranging from cool-temperate and wet north Patagonian rainforests to relatively warm and summer-drought-resistant Valdivian rainforests. We interpret relatively warm/dry conditions between 1900–2600, 690–750 and 320–430 cal yr BP, alternating with cold/wet conditions between 1500–1900, 750–1100 and 430–690 cal yr BP. Rapid deforestation and spread of plants introduced by Europeans occurred at 320 and 140 cal yr BP. The record includes five tephras with ages of 2130, 1460, 1310, 1210, and 340 cal yr BP, all of which precede local fire events and increases in trees favored by disturbance by less than 100 yr. We conclude that centennial-scale changes in the southern westerlies were the primary driver of vegetation shifts in northwestern Patagonia over the last 2600 yr. Within this interval, local disturbance regimes altered the structure, composition, and dynamics of the lowland rainforest vegetation during several discrete, short-lived episodes.

The environmental conditions of the Szczecin Bay, which existed prior to Szczecin Lagoon, have been reconstructed on the basis of the stable carbon and oxygen isotope (18O and 13C) analysis and radiocarbon dates obtained for subfossil shells of Cerastoderma (Cardium) glaucum. The shells in the collected core were well preserved in their life positions, representing a geochemical record of past temperature variation over the middle Holocene. Three major periods with different thermal conditions have been distinguished in the interval ~ 6000–4300 cal yr BP, when the important Littorina regional transgression took place. During the first period, 6000–5250 cal yr BP, water temperature decreased by 1.4°C, and then remained constant over the second period (5250–4750 cal yr BP). In contrast, during the third period (4750–4300 cal yr BP) both δ-values were highly variable and the mean summer temperature (March–November) increased by about 3.5°C. During first two periods, δ18O and δ13C were significantly correlated, indicating stability of the environmental conditions.

Beach-rock exposures provide a record of Holocene sea-level rise along the 560-km-long northeast-facing coast of Ceará, Brazil, that differs from the record available along the other 4300 km of Brazilian coastline further south. Whereas documentation is available from southern Brazil to show Holocene sea levels as much as 5 m above today's level, our observations along the northeastern coast indicate that sea level here was not above the present-day level during the Holocene. Near Jericoacoara, about 240 km northwest of Fortaleza, characterized by strong surf, Precambrian rocks crop out from under a temporary cover of sand in small protected locations with less surf. Here in this upper tidal zone beach rock is being formed, while it is being dismembered synchronously by erosion at lower tide levels. This shows a rising sea level. Along the entire coast of Ceará west of Ponta Grossa the absence of beach rock higher than spring tide level indicates that sea-level was not above its present-day level during the Holocene.

Notches in bedrock situated between 2 m and 6 m above spring-tide high-water level that we formerly described as Holocene, are now believed to be Sangamonian.

Large desiccation cracks were discovered in the intertidal zone of Zhoushan archipelago, East China Sea. Radiocarbon dating showed that desiccation cracks were formed around 31.2–30.4 cal ka BP. Palynological, mineralogical, and elemental geochemical analyses indicated that the cracks were formed as the result of an abrupt climate shift event. The climate changed from warm and humid, to cold and arid, and back to warm and humid again. This climate event is quite likely linked to Heinrich event 3 via the East Asian Monsoon. Desiccation cracks may provide a new proxy material for studying paleoclimate and paleoenvironment in the Quaternary.

Cucú cave is a small cavity, 1600 m above sea level on the southern slope of Sierra de María (Almería Province, SE Spain), where current mean annual precipitation is < 450 mm. Fossils and palynomorphs contained within a sedimentary sequence, up to 9 m in depth, allow us to consider the prevailing climatic conditions, and the timing of cavern development. The lithological sequence is dominated by clast-supported detrital material with no evidence of alluvial transport. These sediments were formed by freeze-cracking during periglacial conditions, causing further cave enlargement after initial solutional development. The clastic sequence formed during cold climates is covered by a flowstone that was deposited during a period of warmer, wetter conditions. This provides a minimum U–Th isochron age of 40.2±4.5 ka for the timing of periglacial action. Micromammal fossil species indicate a chronology between 140 and 80 ka. Paleoecological data based on the structure of the mammal community indicates that cold conditions prevailed at the time of deposit. In the studied sequence the presence of anthropogenic components has not been documented. The pollen assemblages identified are a common feature of Pleistocene cold stages that are in semi-arid regions.

Recent changes along the margins of the Antarctic Peninsula, such as the collapse of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, have highlighted the effects of climatic warming on the Antarctic Peninsula Ice Sheet (APIS). However, such changes must be viewed in a long-term (millennial-scale) context if we are to understand their significance for future stability of the Antarctic ice sheets. To address this, we present nine new cosmogenic 10Be exposure ages from sites on NW Alexander Island and Rothschild Island (adjacent to the Wilkins Ice Shelf) that provide constraints on the timing of thinning of the Alexander Island ice cap since the last glacial maximum. All but one of the 10Be ages are in the range 10.2–21.7 ka, showing a general trend of progressive ice-sheet thinning since at least 22 ka until 10 ka. The data also provide a minimum estimate (490 m) for ice-cap thickness on NW Alexander Island at the last glacial maximum. Cosmogenic 3He ages from a rare occurrence of mantle xenoliths on Rothschild Island yield variable ages up to 46 ka, probably reflecting exhumation by periglacial processes.

Surface exposure dating has become a helpful tool for establishing numeric glacial chronologies, particularly in arid high-mountain regions where radiocarbon dating is challenging due to limited availability of organic material. This study presents 13 new 10Be surface exposure ages from the Kitschi-Kurumdu Valley in the At Bashi Range, Tien Shan. Three moraines were dated to ~ 15, 21 and > 56 ka, respectively, and corroborate previous findings that glacial extents in the Tien Shan during Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage (MIS) 2 were limited compared to MIS 4. This likely documents increasingly arid conditions in Central Asia during the last glacial cycle. Morphological evidence in the Kitschi-Kurumdu Valley and a detailed review of existing numeric glacial chronologies from the Tien Shan indicate that remnants of the penultimate glaciation (MIS 6) are preserved, whereas evidence for MIS 5 glacier advances remains equivocal. Reviewed and recalculated exposure ages from the Pamir mountains, on the other hand, reveal extensive MIS 5 glacial extents that may indicate increased monsoonal precipitation. The preservation of MIS 3 moraines in the Tien Shan and the southern Pamir does not require any monsoonal influence and can be explained alternatively with increased precipitation via the westerlies.

Analysis of terrestrial gastropods that underlie the late Pleistocene Two Creeks forest bed (~ 13,800–13,500 cal yr BP) in eastern Wisconsin, USA provides evidence for a mixed tundra-taiga environment prior to formation of the taiga forest bed. Ten new AMS 14C analyses on terrestrial gastropod shells indicate the mixed tundra-taiga environment persisted from ~ 14,500 to 13,900 cal yr BP. The Twocreekan climatic substage, representing ice-free conditions on the shore of Lake Michigan, therefore began near the onset of peak warming conditions during the Bølling–Allerød interstadial and lasted ~ 1000 yr, nearly 600 yr longer than previously thought. These results provide important data for understanding the response of continental ice sheets to global climate forcing and demonstrate the potential of using terrestrial gastropod fossils for both environmental reconstruction and age control in late Quaternary sediments.

The statistical distributions of cosmogenic nuclide measurements from moraine boulders contain previously unused information on moraine ages, and they help determine whether moraine degradation or inheritance is more important on individual moraines. Here, we present a method for extracting this information by fitting geomorphic process models to observed exposure ages from single moraines. We also apply this method to 94 10Be apparent exposure ages from 11 moraines reported in four published studies. Our models represent 10Be accumulation in boulders that are exhumed over time by slope processes (moraine degradation), and the delivery of boulders with preexisting 10Be inventories to moraines (inheritance). For now, we neglect boulder erosion and snow cover, which are likely second-order processes. Given a highly scattered data set, we establish which model yields the better fit to the data, and estimate the age of the moraine from the better model fit. The process represented by the better-fitting model is probably responsible for most of the scatter among the apparent ages. Our methods should help resolve controversies in exposure dating; we reexamine the conclusions from two published studies based on our model fits.

Improved chronological control on the penultimate advance of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet in northwest Canada (the Reid glaciation) is required for a better understanding of late Quaternary palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental change in eastern Beringia. However, reliable dating of glaciation events beyond the last glacial maximum is commonly hindered by a lack of directly dateable material. In this study we (i) provide the first combined minimum and maximum age constraint on the Reid glaciation at Ash Bend, its reference locale in the Stewart River valley, northwestern Canadian Cordillera, using single-grain optically stimulated luminescence dating of quartz; and (ii) compare the timing of the Reid glaciation with other penultimate ice sheet advances in the region with the aim of establishing improved glacial reconstructions in eastern Beringia. We obtain ages of 158±18 ka and 132±18 ka for glaciofluvial sands overlying and underlying the Reid till, respectively. These ages indicate that the Reid advance, at its reference locale, occurred during MIS 6. This precludes an earlier MIS 8 age, and suggests that the Reid advance may have been synchronous with the Delta glaciation of central Alaska, and is likely correlative with the Mirror Creek glaciation in southern Yukon.

The relationships among internally consistent records of summer sea-surface temperature (SSST), winter sea ice (WSI), and diatomaceous stable isotopes were studied across seven terminations over the last 660 ka in sedimentary cores from ODP sites 1093 and 1094. The sequence of events at both sites indicates that SSST and WSI changes led the carbon and nitrogen isotopic changes in three Terminations (TI, TII and TVI) and followed them in the other four Terminations (TIII, TIV, TV and TVII). In both TIII and TIV, the leads and lags between the proxies were related to weak glacial mode, while in TV and TVII they were due to the influence of the mid-Pleistocene transition. We show that the sequence of events is not unique and does not follow the same pattern across terminations, implying that the processes that initiated climate change in the Southern Ocean has varied through time.

This study tests if burnt soils and sediments can provide reliable records of geomagnetic field strength at the time of burning by carrying out an experiment to reproduce the prehistoric use of fire on a clayish soil substratum. Rock magnetic experiments showed that in the upper 0–1 cm of the central part of the burnt surface, remanence is a thermoremanent magnetization carried by single-domain magnetite and that samples are thermally stable. Fourteen specimens from that area were subjected to paleointensity experiments with the Coe method (1967). An intensity of 42.9±5.7 μT was estimated below 440°C, whereas at higher temperatures magneto-mineralogical alterations were observed. Corresponding successful microwave intensity determinations from two specimens gave a mean value of 47.6 μT. Both results are in reasonable agreement with the expected field value of 45.2 μT. Burnt soils of archeological fires thus have the potential to record accurately the paleofield strength and may be useful targets for archeointensity investigations. Coincident results obtained from two different paleointensity determination methods support this conclusion.