A record of glacial-interglacial cycles over the last one million years from Antro del Corchia speleothems

Antro del Corchia (Corchia Cave) is a large cave located in the Alpi Apuane karst of northern Tuscany, Italy. The cave receives most of its recharge from frontal systems crossing southwestern Europe and western Mediterranean, making the site sensitive to changes in ocean and atmospheric conditions in the North Atlantic. Parts of the cave are rich in speleothems. A suite of stalagmites, flowstones and subaqueous mounds has been sampled to investigate regional palaeoclimate. Stable oxygen and carbon isotopes time series produced from these speleothems, anchored in time using U-Th, U-U and U-Pb isotopic dating, preserve evidence for regional rainfall and temperature changes over millennial and glacial-interglacial timescales that can be linked via the marine-core record to North Atlantic palaeoclimate. A single speleothem core, recovered from a subaqueous mound in the cave, preserves the last 11 glacial-interglacial cycles, constituting a rare and seemingly continuous palaeoclimate record spanning the last 960 ka. More detailed palaeoclimate reconstructions are emerging from the faster growing stalagmites from the cave. The entire speleothem stack provides a means for establishing the timing of glacial terminations and inceptions