The River Eem

The Herholz Centre for Environmental Research (see http://www.alphagalileo.org ) March 3rd … the Eemian Interglacial between 126,000 and 115,000 years ago is named after the river Eem in the Netherlands. It was followed by a glacial period that came to an end 15,000 years ago, known as the Weichselian after the Polish river Weichsel. At it’s peak some 21,000 years ago it’s glaciers stretched as far south as Berlin (or nearly so). Researchers have studied lake sediments to reconstruct the climate history of the Eemian. The samples came from lakes that existed at that time but had been silted up during the following Weichselian Ice Age and subsequently uncovered by recent open cast mining operations (in Germany and Russia). The results show a relatively stable climate over most of the 10,000 years – but there were ‘instabilities’ at it’s beginning and it’s ending.