Pollen abundance and climate reconstruction from MIS 6 of ODP Site 161-976

Sediment samples from the Ocean Drilling Program Site 976 (36°12.3'N, 4°18.8'W) were processed for palynological analyses to reconstruct past vegetation dynamics in the southwestern Mediterranean region during the Penultimate Glacial (MIS 6). Pollen percentages are provided for a time interval between 190 and 127 ka. The age model is based on correlation with the temperate pollen profile from core MD01-2444 from the Portuguese margin (Margari et al., 2010), and with Dongge cave speleothem (Charton et al., 2026; Jiménez-Amat and Zahn, 2015; Kelly et al., 2006). Pollen data were used to generate climatic reconstructions of six annual and seasonal parameters, using four different methods: Modern Analogue Technique (MAT; Guiot 1990), Weighted Averaging Partial Least Squares (WA-PLS; ter Braak and Juggins 1993), Boosted Regression Trees (BRT; Salonen et al. 2012) and Random Forest (RF; Breiman et al. 2001). The results allow to assess the climatic variability during the Penultimate Glacial until the onset of the Last Interglacial.