Masked millennial-scale climate variations in South West Africa during the last glaciation

To address the connection between tropical African vegetation development and high-latitude climate change we present a high-resolution pollen record from ODP Site 1078 (off Angola) covering the period 50-10 ka BP. Although several tropical African vegetation and climate reconstructions indicate an...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Climate of the past 2012-04, Vol.8 (2), p.841-853
Main Authors: Hessler, I, Dupont, L, Handiani, D, Paul, A, Merkel, U, Wefer, G
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Climate change
Precipitation (Meteorology)
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:To address the connection between tropical African vegetation development and high-latitude climate change we present a high-resolution pollen record from ODP Site 1078 (off Angola) covering the period 50-10 ka BP. Although several tropical African vegetation and climate reconstructions indicate an impact of Heinrich Stadials (HSs) in Southern Hemisphere Africa, our vegetation record shows no response. Model simulations conducted with an Earth System Model of Intermediate Complexity including a dynamical vegetation component provide one possible explanation. Because both precipitation and evaporation increased during HSs and their effects nearly cancelled each other, there was a negligible change in moisture supply. Consequently, the resulting climatic response to HSs might have been too weak to noticeably affect the vegetation composition in the study area. Our results also show that the response to HSs in southern tropical Africa neither equals nor mirrors the response to abrupt climate change in northern Africa.
ISSN:1814-9332
1814-9324
1814-9332
DOI:10.5194/cp-8-841-2012