Palaeoclimate of Northern Namibia

Namibia, among the driest countries in sub-Saharan Africa, faces growing challenges from climate change, with reduced precipitation, increased droughts, and rising aridity. While palaeoclimate research has improved our understanding of regional climate variability, substantial gaps persist in Namibia's climatic history due to the scarcity of continuous terrestrial records. Speleothems, understudied in Namibia despite their global prominence as climate archives, offer a promising avenue for addressing these gaps. Their potential to deliver high-resolution insights into past climate conditions is largely untapped in Namibia’s extensive karst systems.
Our research aims to reconstruct Namibia's climatic history over the last 400,000 years using speleothems from northern Namibia's caves. Specific objectives include (i) identifying the timing of major climate shifts, (ii) quantifying temperature and moisture variability during glacial and interglacial periods, and (iii) determining hemispheric climate linkages and drivers of aridity.
We have conducted four field campaigns to the karst region of the Otavi Mountains in northern Namibia since 2022 and obtained a set of pilot samples under a permit issued by the National Commission on Research, Science and Technology in Namibia.

Researchers: Christoph Spötl, Yuri Dublyansky, Gabriella Koltai, Masha Boekholt, Leonie Leitgeb

Partners: Peter Jeutter, Helke Mocke, Haiwei Zhang and Hai Cheng, local farmers

Funding sources: Austrian Academy of Sciences, University of Innsbruck