Article:
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, Volume 242 , Issues 1-2, 24 November 2006, p. 137.
Authors:
Philippe Sorrel, Speranta-Maria Popescu, Martin J.Head, Jean-Pierre Suc, Stephan Klotz, Heidi Oberhänsli.
Abstract:
A recent publication by Sorrel et al. (2006) on the hydrographic development of the Aral Sea during the last 2000 years refers in the Abstract to a “low pressure system that develops over the Eastern Mediterranean and brings moist air to the Middle East and Central Asia during late spring and summer”. In fact, the timing of seasonal rainfall is during late winter and spring, and not late spring and summer as published. This error is not duplicated elsewhere in the publication, but its presence in the Abstract is sufficiently prominent to warrant correction here. Pollen evidence from the Aral Sea (Sorrel et al., in press) supports arguments that the North Atlantic oscillation, when in negative mode, is a controlling factor for humidity reaching Central Asia (Mann, 2002). Hence, moisture loading can only occur in the easternMediterranean during late winter and early spring (Hurrell, 1995; Hurrell and van Loon, 1997; Hurrell et al., 2003). The moist air follows a WSW–WNE trajectory where it subsequently reaches the Middle East (Cullen et al., 2002) and the Aral Sea Basin (Aizen et al., 2001; Lioubimtseva, 2002).