Biome changes in Asia since the mid-Holocene – an analysis of different transient Earth system model simulations

Dallmeyer, Anne; Claußen, Martin; Ni, Jian; Cao, Xianyong; Wang, Yongbo; Fischer, Nils; Pfeiffer, Miriam; Jin, Liya; Khon, Vyacheslav; Wagner, Sebastian; Haberkorn, Kerstin; Herzschuh, Ulrike

doi:10.5194/cp-13-107-2017

Cited by 24 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 78 publications

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“…Biogeophysical effects of aerosol, albedo and evapotranspiration due to land cover changes were previously shown to be able to modify the position of ITCZ and lead to significant large scale geographic alterations in hydrology (e.g., Chung and Soden, 2017;Dallmeyer et al, 2017;Devaraju et al, 2015;Kang et al, 2018;Sagoo and Storelvmo, 2017;Tierney et al, 2017). Similarly, changes in tropical albedo and concurrent changes in regional atmospheric dust emissions due to aridification during the Neoglacial could have affected the ITCZ.…”

Section: Winter Monsoon Variability In the Neoglacialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neoglacial climate anomalies and the Harappan metamorphosis

et al. 2018

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Climate exerted constraints on the growth and decline of past human societies but our knowledge of temporal and spatial climatic patterns is often too restricted to address causal connections. At a global scale, the inter-hemispheric thermal balance provides an emergent framework for understanding regional Holocene climate variability. As the thermal balance adjusted to gradual changes in the seasonality of insolation, the Intertropical Convergence Zone migrated southward accompanied by a weakening of the Indian summer monsoon. Superimposed on this trend, anomalies such as the Little Ice Age point to asymmetric changes in the extratropics of either hemisphere. Here we present a reconstruction of the Indian winter monsoon in the Arabian Sea for the last 6000 years based on paleobiological records in sediments from the continental margin of Pakistan at two levels of ecological complexity: sedimentary ancient DNA reflecting water column environmental states and planktonic foraminifers sensitive to winter conditions. We show that strong winter monsoons between ca. 4500 and 3000 years ago occurred during a period characterized by a series of weak interhemispheric temperature contrast intervals, which we identify as the early neoglacial anomalies (ENA). The strong winter monsoons during ENA were accompanied by changes in wind and precipitation patterns that are particularly evident across the eastern Northern Hemisphere and tropics. This coordinated climate reorganization may have helped trigger the metamorphosis of the urban Harappan civilization into a rural society through a push-pull migration from summer flood-deficient river valleys to the Himalayan piedmont plains with augmented winter rains. The decline in the winter monsoon between 3300 and 3000 years ago at the end of ENA could have played a role in the demise of the rural late Harappans during that time as the first Iron Age culture established itself on the Ghaggar-Hakra interfluve. Finally, we speculate that time-transgressive land cover changes due to aridification of the tropics may have led to a generalized instability of the global climate during ENA at the transition from the warmer Holocene thermal maximum

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Section: Winter Monsoon Variability In the Neoglacialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neoglacial climate anomalies and the Harappan metamorphosis

et al. 2018

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“…A detailed discussion on the model performance and the reference simulation is given in Dallmeyer et al (2017). The biome distributions for the other time-slices have been calculated using an anomaly approach (Dallmeyer et al 2017), i.e. the absolute differences between the mean monthly climatologies for each time-slice and the simulated pre-industrial climate have been added to the reference dataset.…”

Section: Climate Modelling and Biome Simulationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given the high spatial resolution (0.5°×0.5°) of the CRU TS3.10 data, this dataset better resolves the complex climate gradients along the Asian orography and thus provides a more reliable climate background than pre-industrial climate reconstructions or simulations. A detailed discussion on the model performance and the reference simulation is given in Dallmeyer et al (2017). The biome distributions for the other time-slices have been calculated using an anomaly approach (Dallmeyer et al 2017), i.e.…”

Section: Climate Modelling and Biome Simulationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…BIOME4 distinguishes 28 different biomes that are further grouped into 12 mega-biomes in this study. The model has been slightly modified and recalibrated to better represent the regional biome distributions in eastern and northern Asia (Dallmeyer et al 2017).…”

Section: Climate Modelling and Biome Simulationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The biome differences between the modified run and original run should be caused by the changed climate variable. For instance, to test the sensitivity of biome distribution to precipitation change during the late Holocene (between 6 and 0 ka bp), we created an input dataset containing the 2 m-temperature, cloud cover, and absolute minimum temperature of the 6 ka data-set, but with the precipitation distribution of the CRU TS3.10 dataset for 0 ka bp (following Dallmeyer et al 2017).…”

Section: Climate Modelling and Biome Simulationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Biome changes and their inferred climatic drivers in northern and eastern continental Asia at selected times since 40 cal ka bp

Tian

Cao²,

Dallmeyer

et al. 2017

Veget Hist Archaeobot

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Recent global warming is pronounced in high-latitude regions (e.g. northern Asia), and will cause the vegetation to change. Future vegetation trends (e.g. the "arctic greening") will feed back into atmospheric circulation and the global climate system. Understanding the nature and causes of past vegetation changes is important for predicting the composition and distribution of future vegetation communities. Fossil pollen records from 468 sites in northern and eastern Asia were biomised at selected times between 40 cal ka bp and today. Biomes were also simulated using a climate-driven biome model and results from the two approaches compared in order to help understand the mechanisms behind the observed vegetation changes. The consistent biome results inferred by both approaches reveal that long-term and broad-scale vegetation patterns reflect globalto hemispheric-scale climate changes. Forest biomes increase around the beginning of the late deglaciation, become more widespread during the early and middle Holocene, and decrease in the late Holocene in fringe areas of the Asian Summer Monsoon. At the southern and southwestern margins of the taiga, forest increases in the early Holocene and shows notable species succession, which may have been caused by winter warming at ca. 7 cal ka bp. At the northeastern taiga margin (central Yakutia and northeastern Siberia), shrub expansion during the last deglaciation appears to prevent the permafrost from thawing and hinders the northward expansion of evergreen needle-leaved species until ca. 7 cal ka bp. The vegetationclimate disequilibrium during the early Holocene in the taiga-tundra transition zone suggests that projected climate warming will not cause a northward expansion of evergreen needle-leaved species.

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How to map biomes: Quantitative comparison and review of biome‐mapping methods

Champreux,

Saltré,

Traylor

et al. 2024

Ecological Monographs

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Biomes are large‐scale ecosystems occupying large spaces. The biome concept should theoretically facilitate scientific synthesis of global‐scale studies of the past, present, and future biosphere. However, there is neither a consensus biome map nor universally accepted definition of terrestrial biomes, making joint interpretation and comparison of biome‐related studies difficult. “Desert,” “rainforest,” “tundra,” “grassland,” or “savanna,” while widely used terms in common language, have multiple definitions and no universally accepted spatial distribution. Fit‐for‐purpose classification schemes are necessary, so multiple biome‐mapping methods should for now co‐exist. In this review, we compare biome‐mapping methods, first conceptually, then quantitatively. To facilitate the description of the diversity of approaches, we group the extant diversity of past, present, and future global‐scale biome‐mapping methods into three main families that differ by the feature captured, the mapping technique, and the nature of observation used: (1) compilation biome maps from expert elicitation, (2) functional biome maps from vegetation physiognomy, and (3) simulated biome maps from vegetation modeling. We design a protocol to measure and quantify spatially the pairwise agreement between biome maps. We then illustrate the use of such a protocol with a real‐world application by investigating the potential ecological drivers of disagreement between four broadly used, modern global biome maps. In this example, we quantify that the strongest disagreement among biome maps generally occurs in landscapes altered by human activities and moderately covered by vegetation. Such disagreements are sources of bias when combining several biome classifications. When aiming to produce realistic biome maps, biases could be minimized by promoting schemes using observations rather than predictions, while simultaneously considering the effect of humans and other ecosystem engineers in the definition. Throughout this review, we provide comparison and decision tools to navigate the diversity of approaches to encourage a more effective use of the biome concept.

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Biome changes in Asia since the mid-Holocene – an analysis of different transient Earth system model simulations

Cited by 24 publications

References 78 publications

Neoglacial climate anomalies and the Harappan metamorphosis

Neoglacial climate anomalies and the Harappan metamorphosis

Biome changes and their inferred climatic drivers in northern and eastern continental Asia at selected times since 40 cal ka bp

How to map biomes: Quantitative comparison and review of biome‐mapping methods

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