Late Miocene speleothems show significant warming, temperate vegetation, and wildfires in Arctic Siberia
Climate driven northward boreal forest expansion into the tundra biome controlled by permafrost will play a major role in global emissions trajectories. Yet our limited understanding of the interplay between vegetation and permafrost makes predictions of changing boreal forest extent difficult. We analyse fossil pollen, stable carbon isotopes, and lignin and levoglucosan biomarkers from Tortonian speleothems (8.68 ± 0.09 Ma) from the Lena River Delta (N72.27°, E126.94°) in Arctic Siberia to infer palaeotemperature, precipitation, vegetation and fire regimes. The Tortonian provides a potential analogue for near future climate warming under extreme emissions scenarios, with global mean global temperature ca. 4.5°C above modern and atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> concentrations similar to present. We find evidence for a mixed forest regime, capable of maintaining wildfires, in a region currently dominated by tundra. Future transition to a similarly temperate regime would have large-scale impacts on the global carbon cycle.
Authors
- Julia Homann (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7001-856X)
- Stuart Umbo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7828-0266)
- Sebastian F. M. Breitenbach (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9615-2065)
- Matthew J. Pound (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8029-9548)
- Thomas Opel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1315-8256)
- Jessica McCoy (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0914-1662)
- Franziska A. Lechleitner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1697-0429)
- Антон Вакс (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2982-5220)
- Sina Panitz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9640-9569)
- Alexander Osintzev
- Irina Adrian
- Aleksandr Kononov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2379-4782)
Institutions
- University of Bern (CH)
- Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung (DE)
- Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (CH)
- The Wildlife Society (US)
- Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (DE)
- Baikal State University (RU)
- Institute of the Earth’s Crust (RU)
- Northumbria University (GB)
- Irkutsk National Research Technical University (RU)
- Geological Survey of Israel (IL)
- UiT The Arctic University of Norway (NO)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Scientific Reports
- Published
- 2025-08-04
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-12287-x
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Geology and Paleoclimatology Research
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 1.30
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Leverhulme Trust
- Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung
- Natural Environment Research Council
- Helmholtz-Zentrum Potsdam - Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum GFZ