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Holocene Changes in Tropical Wind Intensity and Rainfall: Evidence from Southeast Ghana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

M. R. Talbot
M. R. Talbot*
Affiliation:
Department of Earth Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, Great Britain
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Abstract

Remnants of a fixed aeolian dune ridge occur along the southeast coast of Ghana, just behind the present shoreline. Aeolian sands also cover extensive areas of the Accra Plains. No dunes are present here, the sands mainly occurring as sheets which blanket an early Holocene landscape. The sediments are of mid-Holocene age and were deposited during the interval 4500 B.P.–3800 yr B.P., when the southwesterly winds were stronger than they are at present and much of tropical Africa seems to have been subject to marked aridity. The onset of drier, windier conditions around 4500 yr B.P. brought to an end the more equable climates than had characterized much of West Africa during the earlier Holocene. Aridity, intensified winds, and desert expansion between 4500 and 3800 yr B.P. parallel environmental conditions in tropical continental areas at the height of the Late Pleistocene glaciation.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , September 1981 , pp. 201 - 220
Copyright
University of Washington

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