The palaeolimnology of northern Lake Malawi over the last 25Â ka based upon the elemental and stable isotopic composition of sedimentary organic matter

The geochemical data support recent suggestions of lowstand conditions in Lake Malawi at the time of the LGM, and provide additional evidence of periods of intense but localised aridity in the terminal Pleistocene-earliest Holocene and at the time of the Little Ice Age. The change in mixing regime at ca 11.8 ka seems to have been the result of a radical reorganisation of the dominant surface wind flow over south-eastern Africa. The transition was, within the resolution of currently available chronologies, apparently contemporaneous with marked changes in the circulation patterns of adjacent oceans, and the climate of more distant parts of the Northern Hemisphere.