Publications by authors named "A Columbu"

Ice core records from Greenland provide evidence for multiple abrupt cold-warm-cold events recurring at millennial time scales during the last glacial interval. Although climate variations resembling Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) oscillations have been identified in climate archives across the globe, our understanding of the climate and ecosystem impacts of the Greenland warming events in lower latitudes remains incomplete. Here, we investigate the influence of DO-cold-to-warm transitions on the global atmospheric circulation pattern.

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Our understanding of climate dynamics during millennial-scale events is incomplete, partially due to the lack of their precise phase analyses under various boundary conditions. Here we present nine speleothem oxygen-isotope records from mid-to-low-latitude monsoon regimes with sub-centennial age precision and multi-annual resolution, spanning the Heinrich Stadial 2 (HS2) - a millennial-scale event that occurred at the Last Glacial Maximum. Our data suggests that the Greenland and Antarctic ice-core chronologies require +320- and +400-year adjustments, respectively, supported by extant volcanic evidence and radiocarbon ages.

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Article Synopsis
  • After the last interglacial period, Europe went through severe climate changes, with southern Italy acting as a refuge for various species during these times.
  • The region supported the survival of cold-adapted species like mammoths and rhinos during the coldest phases, and there is evidence of continuous human occupation in southern Italy, particularly in Apulia.
  • Three key sites in Apulia from the late MIS 4 to around 43,000 years ago provide new insights into the area's environmental conditions and its importance as a refuge for Neanderthals and habitat for early modern humans.
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The orthoquartzite Imawarì Yeuta cave hosts exceptional silica speleothems and represents a unique model system to study the geomicrobiology associated to silica amorphization processes under aphotic and stable physical-chemical conditions. In this study, three consecutive evolution steps in the formation of a peculiar blackish coralloid silica speleothem were studied using a combination of morphological, mineralogical/elemental and microbiological analyses. Microbial communities were characterized using Illumina sequencing of 16S rRNA gene and clone library analysis of carbon monoxide dehydrogenase (coxL) and hydrogenase (hypD) genes involved in atmospheric trace gases utilization.

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