Disentangling influences of climate variability and lake-system evolution on climate proxies derived from isoprenoid and branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (GDGTs): the 250&thinsp;kyr Lake Chala record

Baxter, Allix J.; Peterse, Francien; Verschuren, Dirk; Maitituerdi, Aihemaiti; Waldmann, Nicolas; Sinninghe Damsté, Jaap S.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-21-2877-2024

Articles | Volume 21, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-21-2877-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-21-2877-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 11

Research article

|

14 Jun 2024

Research article |

| 14 Jun 2024

Disentangling influences of climate variability and lake-system evolution on climate proxies derived from isoprenoid and branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (GDGTs): the 250 kyr Lake Chala record

Allix J. Baxter, Francien Peterse, Dirk Verschuren, Aihemaiti Maitituerdi, Nicolas Waldmann, and Jaap S. Sinninghe Damsté

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-21-2877-2024-supplement

Data sets

Iso- and brGDGT peak areas and concentrations from the DeepCHALLA sediment sequence (Lake Chala, Kenya/Tanzania) Allix J. Baxter et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11068099

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Short summary

This study investigates the impact of long-term lake-system evolution on the climate signal recorded by glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (GDGTs), a popular biomarker in paleoclimate research. It compares downcore changes in GDGTs in the 250 000 year sediment sequence of Lake Chala (Kenya/Tanzania) to independent data for lake mixing and water-column chemistry. These factors influence the GDGT proxies in the earliest depositional phases (before ~180 ka), confounding the climate signal.