Sea-Surface Temperatures in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific and Surface Temperatures in the Eastern Cordillera of Colombia during El Niño: Implications for Pliocene Conditions
Abstract
Regressions of surface temperatures in the Eastern Cordillera of Colombia with sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) in the equatorial Pacific, and specifically with Niño1+2 and Niño3 temperature anomalies, show that the Eastern Cordillera warms or cools by half of the amplitude of the variation in the eastern Tropical Pacific. Because Pliocene SSTs in the eastern Tropical Pacific resemble those during major El Niño events, when SSTs warm by 4°C, these regressions suggest that the Pliocene Eastern Cordillera was possibly warmer by 2ºC at high elevations. Such post-Pliocene cooling is smaller than the 9-12ºC inferred from fossil pollen assemblages, but comparable to recent estimates of Anderson et al. of 3 ± 1ºC (1σ) since 8 Ma. This change in surface temperature could be explained by a change in regional climate associated with a different tropical Pacific SST distribution, and therefore would require neither an elevation change of the Eastern Cordillera since that time, nor a change between Pliocene and present-day temperatures in the tropics that is as large as estimates of the global change of 2.5-4°C.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFMPP33B1320P
- Keywords:
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- 4912 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- PALEOCEANOGRAPHY;
- 4922 El Nino;
- PALEOCEANOGRAPHY;
- 4928 Global climate models;
- PALEOCEANOGRAPHY;
- 4954 Sea surface temperature;
- PALEOCEANOGRAPHY