Late Quaternary temperature change velocity in Mesoamerica
Abstract
Quaternary climate has been highly variable, and yet few quantitative continental reconstructions are available for tropical areas. Quantitative records of temperature change during the Quaternary are especially relevant for putting modern climate change into a historic context. Within this perspective, two aspects are of singular relevance: i) Identifying and quantifying past climatic variability, and ii) Providing a means to estimate the seed at which climate change happened in the past. Here we show temperature reconstructions and temperature change velocity calculations for two locations in northern tropical America. Temperature reconstruction was based on two sedimentary records form Lake Chalco (30,000 years), central Mexican highlands, and Lake Petén-Itzá, Guatemalan lowlands (86,000 years). Temperature reconstruction was based on the analysis of fossil pollen on the light of pollen-temperature transfer functions. These functions were calibrated through an extensive survey of modern pollen samples covering an elevational gradient from 0 to 4,218 m asl. Derived temperature profiles show a parallel long-term trend and a similar cooling of approximately 5 oC during the Last Glacial Maximum in the lowlands and highlands of Mexico and Guatemala. Using a digital elevation model, we ere able to reconstruct the velocity at which isotherms displaced to produce the observed temperature anomalies. Spatial velocities of temperature change in the studied areas were at least four times slower than values reported for the last 50 years, but also at least twice as fast as those obtained from recent models. This study demonstrates that modern temperature change has no precedent within the last 86,000 years, but also that tropical climate has been more variable than it has been assumed to date.
- Publication:
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AGU Spring Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- May 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUSMGC54A..06C
- Keywords:
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- 1605 GLOBAL CHANGE / Abrupt/rapid climate change;
- 1620 GLOBAL CHANGE / Climate dynamics