Speleothems turned out to be a great stroke of luck: dripstones from two caves in the Swiss Alps provide for the first time a continuous reconstruction of temperatures during the Last Interglacial period.
Paul Wilcox from the Department of Geology has now published a study showing that high alpine regions were affected by stronger temperature increases than lower altitudes.
The Last interglacial period was the last warm period before our present Holocene age and dates back some 129,000 to 116,000 years ago. It is more and more in the focus of research interest, as this period could be used as a possible test bed for warmer conditions in the future.
A look at the climate evolution during the last interglacial may allow us to draw conclusions about how the present climate will change in a warming world.
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