Geothermal evidence of the Late Pleistocene-Holocene orbital forcing (example from the Urals, Russia)

Abstract

We use early obtained in the Middle Urals geothermal reconstruction of the ground surface temperature (GST) history to determine the surface heat flux (SHF) history over the past 35 kyr. A new algorithm of GST-SHF transformation was applied to solve this problem. The time scale of geothermal reconstructions has been corrected by comparing the estimated heat flux and annual insolation at the latitude of 60° N. The consistency of SHF and insolation changes on the interval 35–6 kyr BP (the linear correlation coefficient R = 0.99) points to orbital factors as the main cause of climatic changes during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition. The amplitude of SHF variations is about 1.3% of the insolation changes amplitude. The increase of carbon dioxide concentrations lagged by 2–3 kyr from the SHF increase and occurred synchronously with GST changes.