Lake Ohrid, at the border
between Albania and
North Macedonia, is the
oldest existing lake
in Europe.
The ICDP Drilling Program
in Lake Ohrid was funded
by the German Research
Foundation (DFG), the
German Federal Ministry
of Education and Research,
the University of Cologne
and other international donors.
The deep drilling
was done in 2013.
The maximum drilling depth
was 568 meters, below a
water depth of 245 meters.
Analysis of the extracted
drill cores, with their
sediment layers,
took five years.
The Lake Ohrid project
involved 47 researchers
from 13 nations.
The team was headed by
the geologist Professor
Bernd Wagner from the
University of Cologne.
They published
some findings, titled:
"Mediterranean winter rainfall
in phase with African monsoon
during past 1.36 million years"
in 'Nature'.
"We have shown that the
lake formed exactly
1.36 million years ago
and has existed
continuously ever since",
geologists Dr Bernd Wagner
and Dr Hendrik Vogel
(University of Bern) said.
"We were thrilled
when we realized
that we had retrieved
one of the longest
and most complete
lake sediment cores
from the oldest lake
in Europe."
"Getting the chance
to obtain high-resolution
regional climate data
for a period of over
1.3 million years
is the dream of every
climate researcher."
The sediments
allow scientists
to reconstruct
the climate history
of the region.
This can now
be compared with
estimates from models.
The sediment data show
a significant increase
in winter precipitation
in the northern
Mediterranean region
during the warm seasons.
The Mediterranean climate
is characterized by strong
seasonal contrasts
between dry summers
and wet winters.
Changes in winter rainfall
had been difficult
to reconstruct on
time scales of the
last million years.
Because there are
so few regional
hydro-climate records
covering several
glacial-interglacial cycles
with different earth
orbital geometries,
global ice volume
and atmospheric
greenhouse gas
concentrations.