Nature 296, 56 - 59 (04 March 1982); doi:10.1038/296056a0

Climatic conditions deduced from a 150-kyr oxygen isotope−pollen record from the Arabian Sea

E. Van Campo^*, J. C. Duplessy^† & M. Rossignol-Strick^*

^*Laboratoire de Palynologie CNRS, LA 327, Université des Sciences et Techniques du Languedoc, 34060 Montpellier Cedex, France
^†Centre des Faibles Radioactivités, Laboratoire mixte CNRS−CEA, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France

The correlation reported here of oxygen-18 and pollen records from off-shore marine cores¹ enables the history of the nearby continental vegetation, which is controlled by climate, to be examined within the frame of the standard oxygen isotope stratigraphy. Core MD 76 135 from the northern Arabian Sea recovered sediments ranging from oxygen isotope stage 1, Holocene, to stage 6 before 128 kyr BP. Compared with the distribution of modern pollen, low sea-level glacial intervals contain well-preserved pollen which indicate saline littoral, arid and steppe inland conditions. High sea-level interglacial intervals are characterized by savanna-type vegetation. Pollens which are climatically diagnostic and wind-transported indicate distant source areas and reflect the intensification of low-level opposite air flows: the summer south-west monsoonal flow during the last interglacial and the beginning of the present interglacial, and the winter north-east trade winds during the last glacial maximum.

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