This paper focuses on early Holocene rapid climate changes in the Mediterranean zone, which are under-represented in continental archives, and on their impact on prehistoric societies from the eastern to central Mediterranean (central Anatolia, Cyprus, NE and NW Greece). Our study demonstrates the reality of hydrogeomorphological responses to early Holocene RCCs in valleys and alluvial fans and lake-marsh systems. We finally question their socio-economic and geographical adaptation capacities.

Past intervals in Earth history provide unique windows into conditions much different than those observed today. We investigated the paleoenvironments of a past warm interval (~3 million years ago). Our reconstruction includes data sets for surface temperature, vegetation, soils, lakes, ice sheets, topography, and bathymetry. These data are being used along with global climate models to expand our understanding of the climate system and to help us prepare for future changes.

We use an isotope-equipped GCM and develop original theoretical expression for the precipitation composition to assess δ¹⁸O of paleo-precipitation changes with the Tibetan Plateau uplift. We show that δ¹⁸O of precipitation is very sensitive to climate changes related to the growth of mountains, notably changes in relative humidity and precipitation amount. Topography is shown to be not an exclusive controlling factor δ¹⁸O in precipitation that have crucial consequences for paleoelevation studies.

This study presents an average of seven Late Pleistocene sea level records, which improves the signal-to-noise ratio for estimates of sea level change during glacial cycles of the past 800 000 years.

We demonstrate for the first time the direct link between dust accumulation in marine sediment cores and Saharan land surface by simulating the mid-Holocene and pre-industrial dust cycle as a function of Saharan land surface cover and atmosphere-ocean conditions using the coupled atmosphere-aerosol model ECHAM6-HAM2.1. Mid-Holocene surface characteristics, including vegetation cover and lake surface area, are derived from proxy data and simulations.