A pollen-climate transfer function from the tundra and taiga vegetation in Arctic Siberia and its applicability to a Holocene record

This study aims to establish, evaluate, and apply a modern pollen-climate transfer function from the transition zone between arctic tundra and light-needled taiga in Arctic Siberia. Lacustrine samples (n = 96) from the northern Siberian lowlands of Yakutia were collected along four north-to-south transects crossing the arctic forest line. Samples span a broad temperature and precipitation gradient (mean July temperature, TJuly: 7.5–18.7 °C; mean annual precipitation, Pann: 114–315 mm/yr). Redundancy analyses are used to examine the relationship between the modern pollen signal and corresponding vegetation types and climate. Performance of transfer functions for TJuly and Pann were cross-validated and tested for spatial autocorrelation effects. The root mean square errors of prediction are 1.67 °C for TJuly and 40 mm/yr for Pann. A climate reconstruction based on fossil pollen spectra from a Siberian Arctic lake sediment core spanning the Holocene yielded cold conditions for the Late Glacial (1–2 °C below present TJuly). Warm and moist conditions were reconstructed for the early to mid Holocene (2 °C higher TJuly than present), and climate conditions similar to modern ones were reconstructed for the last 4000 years. In conclusion, our modern pollen data set fills the gap of existing regional calibration sets with regard to the underrepresented Siberian tundra–taiga transition zone. The Holocene climate reconstruction indicates that the temperature deviation from modern values was only moderate despite the assumed Arctic sensitivity to present climate change.