Last Interglacial synthesis of high-latitude temperature: temperature anomalies and associated errors for 4 time slices

The Last Interglacial (LIG, 129-116 thousand of years BP, ka) represents a test bed for climate model feedbacks in warmer-than-present high latitude regions. However, mainly because aligning different palaeoclimatic archives and from different parts of the world is not trivial, a spatio-temporal picture of LIG temperature changes is difficult to obtain. Here, we have selected 47 polar ice core and sub-polar marine sediment records and developed a strategy to align them onto the recent AICC2012 ice core chronology. We provide the first compilation of high-latitude temperature changes across the LIG associated with a coherent temporal framework built between ice core and marine sediment records. Our new data synthesis highlights non-synchronous maximum temperature changes between the two hemispheres with the Southern Ocean and Antarctica records showing an early warming compared to North Atlantic records. We also observe warmer than present-day conditions that occur for a longer time period in southern high latitudes than in northern high latitudes. Finally, the amplitude of temperature changes at high northern latitudes is larger compared to high southern latitude temperature changes recorded at the onset and the demise of the LIG. We have also compiled four data-based time slices with temperature anomalies (compared to present-day conditions) at 115 ka, 120 ka, 125 ka and 130 ka and quantitatively estimated temperature uncertainties that include relative dating errors. This provides an improved benchmark for performing more robust model-data comparison. The surface temperature simulated by two General Circulation Models (CCSM3 and HadCM3) for 130 ka and 125 ka is compared to the corresponding time slice data synthesis. This comparison shows that the models predict warmer than present conditions earlier than documented in the North Atlantic, while neither model is able to produce the reconstructed early Southern Ocean and Antarctic warming. Our results highlight the importance of producing a sequence of time slices rather than one single time slice averaging the LIG climate conditions.

Monsters Take to the Streets! Monstrous Street-Art as Pedagogy of Resistance to Post-Olympic Regeneration in Hackney Wick?

This chapter explores geographies of gentrification and resistance in relation to the monstrous through the lens of street-art in post-Olympic London. It takes as a geographic case study Hackney Wick, which has for a long time been a bastion of alternative and creative living due to cheap rents in large, ex-industrial warehouse spaces. The artistic sociality of the area is imbued within its landscape, as prolific street artists have adorned ex-industrial warehouses and canal-side walls with graffiti and murals. Since the announcement of the 2012 Olympic Games, the area has been a site of intense political and aesthetic contestation. The post-Olympic legacy means that the area has been earmarked for redevelopment, with current residents facing the possibility of joining thousands already displaced by the games. The anxiety of dispossession is reflected by monstrous characters and sinister disembodied teeth, eyes and fingers embedded within the landscape, painted by local artists. Using geographically sensitive mobile and visual methodology to document the landscape and artwork, the chapter analyses and interprets the monstrous themes using a range of theorists including Mikhail Bakhtin, Georges Bataille and Nick Land. I argue that monstrous street-art lays visible claim to public territory for aesthetic purposes at odds with the visions of redevelopers and the needs of capital. Whilst street-art and graffiti do not fit easily within frameworks of organized political resistance or collective social movements, they operate as a kind of epistemological transgression that triggers transformative affects in the viewer. This creates conditions for pedagogies of resistance to gentrification by expressing and mobilizing political affects such as anger and anxiety, raising awareness of geographical politics, and encouraging the viewer to question the status quo of the built environment.