Stoffel, Markus Luetscher, Marc Bollschweiler, Michelle Schlatter, Frédéric 2009-04-16 Mid-latitude ice caves are assumed to be highly sensitive to climatic changes and thus represent a potentially interesting environmental archive. Establishing a precise chronology is, however, a prerequisite for the understanding of processes driving the cave-ice mass balance and thus allows a paleoenvironmental interpretation. At St. Livres ice cave (Jura Mountains, Switzerland), subfossil trees and organic material are abundant in the cave-ice deposit, therefore allowing the dating of individual ice layers. The dendrochronological analysis of 45 subfossil samples of Norway spruce (<i>Picea abies</i> (L.) Karst.) from the overhanging front of the ice outcrop as well as the dating of seven wood samples with ¹⁴C dating allowed for a reconstruction of the St. Livres cave-ice sequence and for the determination of periods of ice accumulation and ablation. Results suggest a maximal age of 1200 ± 50 ¹⁴C yr BP for the observed ice sequence and indicate the presence of four major deposition gaps dated to the 14th, 15th, mid-19th and late 19th century, which can be related with periods of positive North Atlantic Oscillation anomalies (NAO+) over the winter half-year and/or anthropogenic cave-ice abstraction. Similarly, there is evidence that periods of cave-ice accumulation as observed between AD 1877–1900 and AD 1393–1415 would correspond with phases of negative NAO indices. Cave ice represents therefore an original climate archive for the winter half-year and is complementary to other continental proxies recording preferentially summer conditions (e.g., tree rings, varves). application/pdf https://folia.unifr.ch/global/documents/301367 https://folia.unifr.ch/documents/301367/files/stoffel_enc.pdf eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1016/j.yqres.2009.03.002 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess License undefined Quaternary Research. - 2009, vol. 72, no. 1, p. 16-26 Cave ice Sporadic permafrost Dendrochronology Radiocarbon dating North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) Picea abies (L.) Karst. info:eu-repo/classification/udc/551 Evidence of NAO control on subsurface ice accumulation in a 1200 yr old cave-ice sequence, St. Livres ice cave, Switzerland http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501