The Holocene – the period of the last 11,7 thousand years – was the time when human civilization developed. Did climate change during this period? Did these changes affect human societies? How do we know about these changes? Can we trust the data used in the palaeoclimatic reconstructions? This talk will be devoted to the ways of obtaining palaeoclimatic information using indirect methods of reconstructions, particularly dendrochronology, ice core analysis, glacier fluctuations, and biostratigraphic analyses of the lake and swamp sediments. The possibilities and limitations of these methods will be discussed, as well as potential sources of errors and uncertainties. The talk will then focus on the state-of-the-art views on climate change in the Holocene and the factors that condition global and regional climate change. We will discuss some of the pertinent questions that concern the possibility of model-based forecasting of climate changes in the future and the issue of distinguishing between the natural and the anthropogenic elements of climate change.
Lecture by Olga N. Solomina, Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Science, Higher School of Economics