Jens Fohlmeister, Federal Office for Radiation Protection

Speleothem research started some 20 years ago at IUP. Since then, the knowledge about the mechanisms of the incorporation of individual isotope-geochemical proxies of this promising paleoclimate archive has been multiplied, with work performed at IUP being one of the primary drivers of this development.

About 10 years ago, work in the Melchsse-Frutt cave region (central Switzerland) started within the PUA working group, which was since then strongly involved on paleoclimate and isotope-geochemistry related research with speleothems from this cave region. This talk is summarizing the main aspects of the work performed on speleothems from this region, focussing on millennial paleoclimate variability in the period between 300,000 to 130,000 years before present. This work is mainly based on high precision U-Th dating performed at IUP and stable oxygen isotope measurements and indicates that the orbital time scales of insolation influences the frequency of stadial-interstadial transitions during glacials. Another important aspect of this talk covers the interesting uranium systematics detected in cave drip water and carbonate from this cave region. The uranium characteristics of this cave will principally allow to use carbonate material from this cave back to several million years!