Reconstructing 2000 years of hydrological variation derived from laminated proglacial sediments of Lago del Desierto at the eastern margin of the South Patagonian Ice Field, Argentina

Lago del Desierto (49°02′S, 72°51′W) is situated in the climatically sensitive area of Southern Patagonia close to the Hielo Patagonico Sur (HPS or South Patagonian Ice Field, Argentina). Next to marine records and Antarctic ice cores, this continental area is important to reveal hemispheric and global climate trends. As instrumental climate records from this region are generally short and scarce, environmental archives are the only source of long-term records of climate variations. In this study, the potential of laminated proglacial sediments from Lago del Desierto as a palaeoclimate archive is evaluated. Two parallel gravity cores (max. length 283 cm) were analysed using a multi-proxy approach. Radiometric dating (14C, 210Pb and 137Cs) and tephrochronology document that the sediment cover the last 2000 years. Especially in the middle part of the record, numerous turbidites make climate variations difficult to decipher. However, after exclusion of event layers changes in sedimentological, mineralogical, and geochemical parameters reveal a long-term trend of runoff variations and sediment accessibility controlled by changes in temperature and precipitation. An abrupt transition in sediment composition occurred around AD 850 and is interpreted as a change in sediment availability related to the initial exposure of formerly glaciated areas in the catchment. This striking change mirrors the onset of warmer climate conditions during the Medieval Climate Anomaly. Moreover, the Little Ice Age cooling and the subsequent 20th century warming can be traced in the sediment record corresponding to an overall trend observed for southern South America. The proglacial lacustrine sediment record of Lago del Desierto thus constitutes a link between glacier studies of the HPS and other terrestrial climate archives in a region were long, and continuous climate records are still rare.