scholarly journals Determining the response of African biota to climate change: using the past to model the future

2013 ◽  
Vol 368 (1625) ◽  
pp. 20120491 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. J. Willis ◽  
K. D. Bennett ◽  
S. L. Burrough ◽  
M. Macias-Fauria ◽  
C. Tovar
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Future Climate ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Tropical Africa ◽  
The Past ◽  
Community Turnover ◽  
Climate Change Information ◽  
Vegetation Models ◽  
Huge Variation

Prediction of biotic responses to future climate change in tropical Africa tends to be based on two modelling approaches: bioclimatic species envelope models and dynamic vegetation models. Another complementary but underused approach is to examine biotic responses to similar climatic changes in the past as evidenced in fossil and historical records. This paper reviews these records and highlights the information that they provide in terms of understanding the local- and regional-scale responses of African vegetation to future climate change. A key point that emerges is that a move to warmer and wetter conditions in the past resulted in a large increase in biomass and a range distribution of woody plants up to 400–500 km north of its present location, the so-called greening of the Sahara. By contrast, a transition to warmer and drier conditions resulted in a reduction in woody vegetation in many regions and an increase in grass/savanna-dominated landscapes. The rapid rate of climate warming coming into the current interglacial resulted in a dramatic increase in community turnover, but there is little evidence for widespread extinctions. However, huge variation in biotic response in both space and time is apparent with, in some cases, totally different responses to the same climatic driver. This highlights the importance of local features such as soils, topography and also internal biotic factors in determining responses and resilience of the African biota to climate change, information that is difficult to obtain from modelling but is abundant in palaeoecological records.

Past and future climate change: response by mixed deciduous–coniferous forest ecosystems in northern Michigan

1992 ◽  
Vol 22 (11) ◽  
pp. 1727-1738 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen M. Solomon ◽  
Patrick J. Bartlein
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Vegetation Dynamics ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Coniferous Forest ◽  
Mixed Forest ◽  
Future Climate ◽  
Forest Composition ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
The Past ◽  
Gap Models

During the 21st century, global climate change is expected to become a significant force redefining global biospheric boundaries and vegetation dynamics. In the northern hardwood–boreal forest transition forests, it should, at the least, control reproductive success and failure among unmanaged mixed forest stands. One means by which to predict future responses by the mixed forests is to examine the way in which they have responded to climate changes in the past. We used proxy climate data derived from Holocene (past 10 000 years) pollen records in the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan to drive forest gap models, in an effort to define regional prehistoric vegetation dynamics on differing soils. The gap models mimic forest reproduction and growth as a successional process and, hence, are appropriate for defining long-term tree and stand dynamics. The modeled period included a mid-postglacial period that was warmer than today's climate. Model failures, made apparent from the exercise, were corrected and the simulations were repeated until the model behaved credibly. Then, the same gap model was used to simulate potential future vegetation dynamics, driven by projections of a future climate that was controlled by greenhouse gases. This provided us with the same "measure" of vegetation in the past, present, and future, generating a continuously comparable record of change and stability in forest composition and density. The resulting projections of vegetation response to climate change appear to be affected more by the rate than by the magnitude of climate change.

scholarly journals Ancient Ocean Floor Seashells Improve Model of Past Glaciers

Eos ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Underwood
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Ice Sheets ◽  
Future Climate ◽  
Ocean Floor ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
The Past ◽  
Improve Model ◽  
Accurate Reconstruction

More accurate reconstruction of ice sheets over the past 150,000 years could help scientists predict future climate change.

Climate Change in Eastern Africa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob Marchant
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Variability ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Future Climate ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Tropical Conditions ◽  
Convergence Zones

The climatology of East Africa results from the complex interaction between major global convergence zones with more localized regional feedbacks to the climate system; these in turn are moderated by a diverse land surface characterized by coastal to land transitions, high mountains, and large lakes. The main climatic character of East Africa, and how this varies across the region, takes the form of seasonal variations in rainfall that can fall as one, two, or three rainy seasons, the times and duration of which will be determined by the interplay between major convergence zones with more localized regional feedbacks. One of the key characteristics of East Africa are climatic variations with altitude as climates change along an altitudinal gradient that can extend from hot, dry, “tropical” conditions to cool, wet, temperate conditions and on the highest mountains “polar” climates with permanent ice caps. With this complex and variable climate landscape of the present, as scientists move through time to explore past climatic variability, it is apparent there have been a series of relatively rapid and high-magnitude environmental shifts throughout East Africa, particularly characterized by changing hydrological budgets. How climate change has impacted on ecosystems, and how those ecosystems have responded and interacted with human populations, can be unearthed by drawing on evidence from the sedimentary and archaeological record of the past six thousand years. As East African economies, and the livelihoods of millions of people in the region, have been clearly heavily affected by climate variability in the past, so it is expected that future climate variability will impact on ecosystem functioning and the preparedness of communities for future climate change.

scholarly journals Extended Dependence of the Hydrological Regime on the Land Cover Change in the Three-North Region of China: An Evaluation under Future Climate Conditions

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi Yao ◽  
Xianhong Xie ◽  
Shanshan Meng ◽  
Bowen Zhu ◽  
Kang Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Ecological Restoration ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Hydrological Regime ◽  
Future Climate ◽  
Climate Conditions ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Hydrological Effects

The hydrological regime in arid and semi-arid regions is quite sensitive to climate and land cover changes (LCC). The Three-North region (TNR) in China experiences diverse climate conditions, from arid to humid zones. In this region, substantial LCC has occurred over the past decades due to ecological restoration programs and urban expansion. At a regional scale, the hydrological effects of LCC have been demonstrated to be less observable than the effects of climate change, but it is unclear whether or not the effects of LCC may be intensified by future climate conditions. In this study, we employed remote sensing datasets and a macro-scale hydrological modeling to identify the dependence of the future hydrological regime of the TNR on past LCC. The hydrological effects over the period from 2020–2099 were evaluated based on a Representative Concentration Pathway climate scenario. The results indicated that the forest area increased in the northwest (11,691 km2) and the north (69 km2) of China but declined in the northeast (30,042 km2) over the past three decades. Moreover, the urban area has expanded by 1.3% in the TNR. Under the future climate condition, the hydrological regime will be influenced significantly by LCC. Those changes from 1986 to 2015 may alter the future hydrological cycle mainly by promoting runoff (3.24 mm/year) and decreasing evapotranspiration (3.23 mm/year) over the whole region. The spatial distribution of the effects may be extremely uneven: the effects in humid areas would be stronger than those in other areas. Besides, with rising temperatures and precipitation from 2020 to 2099, the LCC may heighten the risk of dryland expansion and flooding more than climate change alone. Despite uncertainties in the datasets and methods, the regional-scale hydrological model provides new insights into the extended impacts of ecological restoration and urbanization on the hydrological regime of the TNR.

scholarly journals New Insights in Regional Climate Change: Coupled Land Albedo Change Estimation in Greenland from 1981 to 2017

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 756
Author(s):  
Fei Peng ◽  
Haoran Zhou ◽  
Gong Chen ◽  
Qi Li ◽  
Yongxing Wu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Spatiotemporal Variation ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Anthropogenic Factors ◽  
The Past

Land albedo is an essential variable in land surface energy balance and climate change. Within regional land, albedo has been altered in Greenland as ice melts and runoff increases in response to global warming against the period of the pre-industrial revolution. The assessment of spatiotemporal variation in albedo is a prerequisite for accurate prediction of ice sheet loss and future climate change, as well as crucial prior knowledge for improving current climate models. In our study, we employed the satellite data product from the global land surface satellite (GLASS) project to obtain the spatiotemporal variation of albedo from 1981 to 2017 using the non-parameter-based M-K (Mann-Kendall) method. It was found that the albedo generally showed a decreasing trend in the past 37 years (−0.013 ± 0.001 decade−1, p < 0.01); in particular, the albedo showed a significant increasing trend in the middle part of the study area but a decreasing trend in the coastal area. The interannual and seasonal variations of albedo showed strong spatial-temporal heterogeneity. Additionally, based on natural and anthropogenic factors, in order to further reveal the potential effects of spatiotemporal variation of albedo on the regional climate, we coupled climate model data with observed data documented by satellite and adopted a conceptual experiment for detections and attributions analysis. Our results showed that both the greenhouse gas forcing and aerosol forcing induced by anthropogenic activities in the past 37 decades were likely to be the main contributors (46.1%) to the decrease of albedo in Greenland. Here, we indicated that overall, Greenland might exhibit a local warming effect based on our study. Albedo–ice melting feedback is strongly associated with local temperature changes in Greenland. Therefore, this study provides a potential pathway to understanding climate change on a regional scale based on the coupled dataset.

scholarly journals Warm climates of the past—a lesson for the future?

2013 ◽  
Vol 371 (2001) ◽  
pp. 20130146 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. J. Lunt ◽  
H. Elderfield ◽  
R. Pancost ◽  
A. Ridgwell ◽  
G. L. Foster ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Numerical Models ◽  
Future Climate ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Climate Data ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Past Climate ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Warm Climates

This Discussion Meeting Issue of the Philosophical Transactions A had its genesis in a Discussion Meeting of the Royal Society which took place on 10–11 October 2011. The Discussion Meeting, entitled ‘Warm climates of the past: a lesson for the future?’, brought together 16 eminent international speakers from the field of palaeoclimate, and was attended by over 280 scientists and members of the public. Many of the speakers have contributed to the papers compiled in this Discussion Meeting Issue. The papers summarize the talks at the meeting, and present further or related work. This Discussion Meeting Issue asks to what extent information gleaned from the study of past climates can aid our understanding of future climate change. Climate change is currently an issue at the forefront of environmental science, and also has important sociological and political implications. Most future predictions are carried out by complex numerical models; however, these models cannot be rigorously tested for scenarios outside of the modern, without making use of past climate data. Furthermore, past climate data can inform our understanding of how the Earth system operates, and can provide important contextual information related to environmental change. All past time periods can be useful in this context; here, we focus on past climates that were warmer than the modern climate, as these are likely to be the most similar to the future. This introductory paper is not meant as a comprehensive overview of all work in this field. Instead, it gives an introduction to the important issues therein, using the papers in this Discussion Meeting Issue, and other works from all the Discussion Meeting speakers, as exemplars of the various ways in which past climates can inform projections of future climate. Furthermore, we present new work that uses a palaeo constraint to quantitatively inform projections of future equilibrium ice sheet change.

scholarly journals Large scale integrated hydrological modelling of the impact of climate change on the water balance with DANUBIA

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Prasch ◽  
T. Marke ◽  
U. Strasser ◽  
W. Mauser
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Time Series ◽  
Water Balance ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Future Climate ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Impact Of Climate Change ◽  
Ipcc Sres ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Future climate change will affect the water availability in large areas. In order to derive appropriate adaptation strategies the impact on the water balance has to be determined on a regional scale in a high spatial and temporal resolution. Within the framework of the BRAHMATWINN project the model system DANUBIA, developed within the project GLOWA Danube (GLOWA Danube, 2010; Mauser and Ludwig, 2002), was applied to calculate the water balance components under past and future climate conditions in the large-scale mountain watersheds of the Upper Danube and the Upper Brahmaputra. To use CLM model output data as meteorological drivers DANUBIA is coupled with the scaling tool SCALMET (Marke, 2008). For the determination of the impact of glacier melt water on the water balance the model SURGES (Weber et al., 2008; Prasch, 2010) is integrated into DANUBIA. In this paper we introduce the hydrological model DANUBIA with the tools SCALMET and SURGES. By means of the distributed hydrological time series for the past from 1971 to 2000 the model performance is presented. In order to determine the impact of climate change on the water balance in both catchments, time series from 2011 to 2080 according to the IPCC SRES emission scenarios A2, A1B, B2 and Commitment are analysed. Together with the socioeconomic outcomes (see Chapter 4) the DANUBIA model results provide the basis for the derivation of Integrated Water Resources Management Strategies to adapt to climate change impacts (see Chapter 9 and 10).

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