Overview and significance of a 250 ka paleoclimate record from El’gygytgyn Crater Lake,NE Russia

Sediment piston cores from Lake El’gygytgyn (67°N, 172°E), a 3.6 million year old meteorite impact crater in northeastern Siberia, have been analyzed to extract a multi-proxy millennial-scale climate record extending to nearly 250 ka, with distinct fluctuations in sedimentological, physical, biochemical, and paleoecological parameters. Five major themes emerge from this research. First the pilot cores and seismic data show that El’gygytygn Crater Lake contains what is expected to be the longest, most continuous terrestrial record of past climate change in the entire Arctic back to the time of impact. Second, processes operating in the El’gygytygn basin lead to changes in the limnogeology and the biogeochemistry that reflect robust changes in the regional climate and paleoecology over a large part of the western Arctic. Third, the magnetic susceptibility and other proxies record numerous rapid change events. The recovered lake sediment contains both the best-resolved record of the last interglacial and the longest terrestrial record of millennial scale climate change in the Arctic, yielding a high fidelity multi-proxy record extending nearly 150,000 years beyond what has been obtained from the Greenland Ice Sheet. Fourth, the potential for evaluating teleconnections under different mean climate states is high. Despite the heterogeneous nature of recent Arctic climate change, millennial scale climate events in the North Atlantic/Greenland region are recorded in the most distal regions of the Arctic under variable boundary conditions. Finally, deep drilling of the complete depositional record in Lake El’gygytgyn will offer new insights and, perhaps, surprises into the late Cenozoic evolution of Arctic climate. This is the first in a series of eleven papers published in this special issue dedicated to initial studies of El'gygytgyn Crater Lake and its catchment in NE Russia. Julie Brigham-Grette, Martin Melles, Pavel Minyuk were guest editors of this special issue.