HRZZ project UIP-2020-02-7355.

Climate change is one of the major challenges that the world is now facing. Understanding of natural past climate variability is crucial baseline information for more accurate predictions of anthropogenically-driven climate changes in the future.

UNLOCK-CAVE project seeks to understand the regional response to high-frequency natural climate variability in South-Central Europe during the last 1400 years by exploring multiple geochemical proxies in speleothems from Nova Grgosova cave in Croatia. Our specific aims are: to explore the link between geochemical properties of speleothems at this site and a major mode of internal climate variability, North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) on annual to sub-decadal time scale; to investigate potential of these speleothems to yield quantitative data on past climate variability and to decipher climate and non-climate drivers of carbon isotope composition in these speleothems. Our palaeoclimate interpretations will be underpinned by long-term extensive cave monitoring program. This project will yield first high-resolution quantitative record of past climate variability in this poorly studied region and will lead to a better understanding of regional responses to atmospheric circulation variability in the past.

Project webpage: https://unlock-cave.hgi-cgs.hr/