ORIGINAL PAPER Palaeomagnetism for chronologies of recent alpine lake sediments: successes and limits C. Crouzet . B. Wilhelm . P. Sabatier . F. Demory . N. Thouveny . C. Pignol . J.-L. Reyss . O. Magand . A. Jeltsch-Tho ¨mmes . M. Bajard . L. Augustin . F. Arnaud Received: 16 March 2017 / Accepted: 23 May 2019 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2019 Abstract Chronologies of lake-sediment records covering the last centuries to millennia are usually based on both short-lived radionuclides and radiocar- bon dating. However, beyond the range of short-lived radionuclides, age model accuracy often suffers from large radiocarbon uncertainties. For high-altitude records, this issue is even more prominent as terrestrial plant fragments for radiocarbon dating are often lacking due to the sparse vegetation in such environ- ments. In this study, we evaluate the potential of the geomagnetic field secular variations as a complemen- tary tool to establish more robust age–depth relation- ships. Our palaeomagnetic study, applied to five high- altitude lakes from the western European Alps, first shows that recent unconsolidated sediments can carry stable remanent magnetization. The analysis of the magnetic parameters indicates that low-coercivity Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-019-00087-z) con- tains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. C. Crouzet (&) Universite ´ Savoie Mont Blanc, Universite ´ Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IRD, IFFSTAR, ISTerre, 73376 Le Bourget Du Lac, France e-mail: christian.crouzet@univ-smb.fr B. Wilhelm Á O. Magand Universite ´ Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IRD, Grenoble INP (Institute of Engineering Univ. Grenoble Alpes), IGE, 38000 Grenoble, France P. Sabatier Á C. Pignol Á M. Bajard Á F. Arnaud Universite ´ Grenoble Alpes, Universite ´ Savoie Mont Blanc, CNRS, UMR 5204, EDYTEM, 73000 Chambe ´ry Cedex, France F. Demory Á N. Thouveny Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, IRD, INRA, Coll France, CEREGE, Aix-En-Provence, France J.-L. Reyss LSCE, Universite ´ de Versailles Saint-Quentin CEA- CNRS, avenue de la terrasse, 91198 Gif-Sur-Yvette Cedex, France A. Jeltsch-Tho ¨mmes Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland A. Jeltsch-Tho ¨mmes Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland M. Bajard Centre for Earth Evolution and Dynamics, University of Oslo, PO Box 1028, Blindern, 0315 Oslo, Norway L. Augustin Division technique de l’INSU, Centre de Carottage et de Forage National, CNRS, La Seyne sur Mer, France 123 J Paleolimnol https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-019-00087-z