Allerød—Younger Dryas Lake Temperatures from Midge Fossils in Atlantic Canada

Remains of freshwater midges are abundant in lake sediments, and their species distributions are closely related to the surface-water temperature of lakes; their distributions thus provide a powerful tool for paleoclimatology. The distribution of species in a core from Splan Pond in Atlantic Canada indicates that there were abrupt transitions in late-glacial temperatures between warm and cold states. The transitions are correlative with the well-known warm Allerød and cold Younger Dryas events in Europe. These data thus confirm the inference from palynological data that these events affected regions on both sides of the Atlantic.