The age of the Hengelo interstadial revisited

Understanding past climate events relies for a large part on correlations between various proxy records. For the last glacial cycle, these are mainly marine and ice core records. However, such tele-connections are often based on weak arguments. For terrestrial data the Hengelo interstadial is a key event, discovered more than 4 decades ago. Here we review the age of this event, in particular by its C-14 dates, their calibration and comparison with other proxy records. We conclude that the Hengelo interstadial, at the type locality and a few nearby comparable sites, dates between 36,000 and 38,600 BP (uncalibrated radiocarbon age), corresponding to 42,350 and 41,380 calBP. Correlation of the Hengelo interstadial with ice-core records remains problematic. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.