The Potential for High-Resolution Palaeoclimate Records of the Pliocene from Speleothems

The Pliocene is widely regarded as a useful analogue for future greenhouse warming and is thus an important interval for palaeoclimate study. Much of what we know about climate through the Pliocene comes from marine sediments. However, we know relatively little about interannual to interdecadal variability, yet reconstructing Pliocene climate at such resolution has the potential to yield important information for testing climate models. Recent advances in uranium-lead (U-Pb) dating have paved the way for investigating Pliocene (and older) high-resolution palaeoclimate records from speleothems. We present such an example from the Nullarbor Plain, Australia.

The Nullabor is an emerged, karstified platform of Eocene to Miocene limestones situated on the arid southern fringe of the Australian continent. Caves developed in the karst preserve a large archive of ancient calcite speleothems, in stark contrast to the virtual lack of calcite speleothems today. U-Pb radiometric dating of these speleothems reveals that most the growth occurred during the Pliocene. The geochemistry of these speleothems suggests that the Nullarbor was a wetter and more-vegetated environment at the time. High-resolution geochemical analyses and fluorescence microscopy show that some of the speleothems are almost certainly annually laminated, and contain multi-proxy signatures similar to Holocene speleothems that are commonly associated with hydrological processes. We present a series of encouraging preliminary results from several specimens.