Handiani, Dian Noor; Paul, André; Dupont, Lydie M (2013): Tropical climate and vegetation simulations during the Heinrich event 1 using an Earth System Model of Intermediate Complexity (EMIC) - the University of Victoria Earth System-Climate Model (UVic ESCM) [dataset]. PANGAEA, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.804876, Supplement to: Handiani, DN et al. (2012): Tropical climate and vegetation changes during Heinrich Event 1: a model-data comparison. Climate of the Past, 8(1), 37-57, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-8-37-2012
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Abstract:
Abrupt climate changes from 18 to 15 thousand years before present (kyr BP) associated with Heinrich Event 1 (HE1) had a strong impact on vegetation patterns not only at high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, but also in the tropical regions around the Atlantic Ocean. To gain a better understanding of the linkage between high and low latitudes, we used the University of Victoria (UVic) Earth System-Climate Model (ESCM) with dynamical vegetation and land surface components to simulate four scenarios of climate-vegetation interaction: the pre-industrial era, the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), and a Heinrich-like event with two different climate backgrounds (interglacial and glacial). We calculated mega-biomes from the plant-functional types (PFTs) generated by the model to allow for a direct comparison between model results and palynological vegetation reconstructions.
Our calculated mega-biomes for the pre-industrial period and the LGM corresponded well with biome reconstructions of the modern and LGM time slices, respectively, except that our pre-industrial simulation predicted the dominance of grassland in southern Europe and our LGM simulation resulted in more forest cover in tropical and sub-tropical South America.
The HE1-like simulation with a glacial climate background produced sea-surface temperature patterns and enhanced inter-hemispheric thermal gradients in accordance with the "bipolar seesaw" hypothesis. We found that the cooling of the Northern Hemisphere caused a southward shift of those PFTs that are indicative of an increased desertification and a retreat of broadleaf forests in West Africa and northern South America. The mega-biomes from our HE1 simulation agreed well with paleovegetation data from tropical Africa and northern South America. Thus, according to our model-data comparison, the reconstructed vegetation changes for the tropical regions around the Atlantic Ocean were physically consistent with the remote effects of a Heinrich event under a glacial climate background.
Further details:
Description of: Filenames, parameters, unit, level and filetype. hdl:10013/epic.40586.d001
Parameter(s):
# | Name | Short Name | Unit | Principal Investigator | Method/Device | Comment |
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1 | File name | File name | Handiani, Dian Noor | |||
2 | File size | File size | kByte | Handiani, Dian Noor | ||
3 | File type | File type | Handiani, Dian Noor | |||
4 | Description | Description | Handiani, Dian Noor | |||
5 | Uniform resource locator/link to model result file | URL model | Handiani, Dian Noor |
License:
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-3.0)
Size:
55 data points