Importance of this paper: Organic chemicals evaporating out of vegetation may aect various aspects of the earthÕs environment ± including the amount of haze in the air, which aects the earthÕs heat balance by re¯ecting sunlight back into space, and also the lifetime of methane gas in the atmosphere. Based on reconstructed vegetation zones for the coldest phase of the Last Glacial Period (about 20,000 years ago) and the warmer present interglacial (the last 11,000 years), we estimated the total amount of the substances evaporating from the world's vegetation. In the cooler, drier, less forested world of the Last Glacial, the¯uxes of these compounds were probably reduced by about one-third to one-half. The resulting reduction in haze might have tended to keep the earth slightly warmer during the Glacial than it would otherwise have been. In addition, Glacial methane levels may have been lowered because of the lack of volatile organics Ômopping upÕ reactive free radicals that would otherwise break down methane.
AbstractThe¯ux of volatile organic chemicals from natural vegetation in¯uences various atmospheric properties including oxidation state of the troposphere via the hydroxyl radical (OH), photochemical haze production and the concentration of greenhouse gases (CH 4 , H 2 O, CO). Because the Volatile Organic Compound (VOC)¯ux in the present-day world varies markedly with both vegetation cover and with climate, changes in the emission of VOCs may have damped or ampli®ed past climate changes.Here we conduct a preliminary study on possible changes in VOC emission resulting from broad scale vegetation and climate change since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). During the general period of the LGM ($25±17,000 years before present {BP}), global forest cover was considerably less than in the present potential situation. The change in vegetation would have resulted in a $30% reduction in VOC emission at 643 Tg y À1 relative to the present potential vegetation (912.9 Tg y À1 ). Uncertainty in global vegetation cover during the LGM bounds the VOC estimate by AE15%. In contrast, during the warmer early-to-mid Holocene (8000 and 5000 BP), with greater forest extent and less desert than during the late Holocene (0 BP), emission rates of VOCs seem likely to have been higher than at present.Further modi®cations in VOC emission may have been mediated by a reduction in mean tropical lowland temperatures (by around 5±6°C) decreasing the LGM VOC emission estimate by 38% relative to the warmer LGM scenario. Increased VOC emissions due to forest expansion and increased tropical temperatures since the LGM may have served as a signi®cant driver of climate change over the last 15 ka y through the in¯uence of VOC oxidation; this can impact tropospheric radiative balance through reductions in the concentration of OH, increasing the concentration of CH 4 .The error limits on past VOC emission estimates are large, given the uncertainties of present-day VOC emission rates, paleoecosystem distribution, tropical paleoclimatic conditions, and ph...