The focus of this report is climate variability during the Late Holocene. The reason to focus on the Late Holocene is because the climate of the early and early-mid Holocene was still under the influence of glacial retreat, ice melt and crustal rebound (Last and Teller, 1983; MacDonald and Case, 2000). The great majority of the climate records included in this report come from the study of lake sediments and these lakes have been formed as a consequence of glacial retreats; therefore, the climate signal can be analysed after all the influence from glaciers has ended. This report includes six sections: (1) a summary of the present climate; (2) the main findings from the limnological and palynological records; (3) the climate changes detected by the geomorphogical evidence, mainly dune activity; (4) the changes in biomes as a response to climate change; (5) the general trends of climate change for the last centuries as indicated by tree ring analysis; and (6) a discussion about climate change in the SSRB area.
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