Eocene monsoon prevalence over China: A paleobotanical perspective

Quan, Cheng; Liu, Yusheng; Utescher, Torsten

doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2012.09.035

Cited by 112 publications

(163 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Only in central Asia do sediments and flora fossils indicate semi-dry to dry conditions with desert vegetation (Wang et al, 2013;Quan et al, 2012). Like previous simulations by Huber and Caballero (2011) and Loptson et al (2014), our simulation reproduces the Asian desert because a monsoon climate causes a seasonally dry climate in this region.…”

Section: Simulationssupporting

confidence: 77%

Transitivity of the climate–vegetation system in a warm climate

Port

Claußen

2015

Clim. Past

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Abstract. To date, the transitivity of the global system has been analysed for late Quaternary (glacial, interglacial, and present-day) climate. Here, we extend this analysis to a warm, almost ice-free climate with a different configuration of continents. We use the Earth system model of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology to analyse the stability of the climate system under early Eocene and pre-industrial conditions. We initialize the simulations by prescribing either dense forests or bare deserts on all continents. Starting with desert continents, an extended desert remains in central Asia in the early Eocene climate. Starting with dense forest coverage, the Asian desert is much smaller, while coastal deserts develop in the Americas which appear to be larger than in the simulations with initially bare continents. These differences can be attributed to differences in the large-scale tropical circulation. With initially forested continents, a stronger dipole in the 200 hPa velocity potential develops than in the simulation with initially bare continents. This difference prevails when vegetation is allowed to adjust to and interact with climate. Further simulations with initial surface conditions that differ in the region of the Asian desert only indicate that local feedback processes are less important in the development of multiple states. In the interglacial, pre-industrial climate, multiple states develop only in the Sahel region. There, local climate-vegetation interaction seems to dominate.

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Section: Simulationssupporting

confidence: 77%

Transitivity of the climate–vegetation system in a warm climate

Port

Claußen

2015

Clim. Past

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“…In other words, we wanted to know whether the praxis follows the theory of CA (Mosbrugger and Utescher, 1997;Utescher et al, 2014). In order to provide this assessment, we focus on two recent Coexistence Approach publications: the first is a review of the method by Utescher et al (2014), which also provides new guidelines for best practise, and the second is a study that reconstructs the Eocene climate of China (Quan et al, 2012) using the Palaeoflora database (Coexistence Approach studies that use the Palaeoflora database are henceforth abbreviated to CA + PF); the authors consider the latter to be the most extensively documented CA + PF study to date. The data (climatic ranges and assignments of nearest living relatives) for previous studies using this method have, by and large, been unavailable for scrutiny (Grimm and Denk, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The only parameter that has been evaluated is the mean annual temperature, which showed little reliability of palaeoclimate reconstructions based on the Coexistence Approach (Grimm and Denk, 2012). In 2012, a CA + PF study was published that complies almost entirely with the new documentation policy (Quan et al, 2012). Using literature data, Quan et al (2012) compiled taxon lists for the Eocene of China, the distribution of these assemblages span the entire country.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In 2012, a CA + PF study was published that complies almost entirely with the new documentation policy (Quan et al, 2012). Using literature data, Quan et al (2012) compiled taxon lists for the Eocene of China, the distribution of these assemblages span the entire country. Please note that we use the climate parameter abbreviations common to Coexistence Approach studies and these are listed in Section 1.1.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Based on the substantial drop observed in CMT (average temperature of the coldest month), slight potential increase in WMT (average temperature of the warmest month) and generally low LMP (monthly precipitation of the driest month) observed in southern China, they concluded that the Himalayan uplift must have already occurred by the late Eocene inflicting monsoonal climate in southern China. Appendix A of Quan et al (2012) lists the floral assemblages, their constituent fossil taxa and the nearest-living relatives used to represent those taxa. Appendix B of Quan et al (2012) lists the climatic min-max tolerances of all nearest-living relatives (including unused taxa) extracted from Palaeoflora database.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fables and foibles: A critical analysis of the Palaeoflora database and the Coexistence Approach for palaeoclimate reconstruction

Grimm

Bouchal

Denk

et al. 2016

Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology

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The 'Coexistence Approach' is a mutual climate range (MCR) technique combined with the nearest-living relative (NLR) concept. It has been widely used for palaeoclimate reconstructions based on Eurasian plant fossil assemblages; most of them palynofloras (studied using light microscopy). The results have been surprisingly uniform, typically converging to subtropical, per-humid or monsoonal conditions. Studies based on the Coexistence Approach have had a marked impact in literature, generating over 10,000 citations thus far. However, recent studies have pointed out inherent theoretical and practical problems entangled in the application of this widely used method. But so far little is known how results generated by the Coexistence Approach are affected by subjective errors, data errors, and violations of the basic assumptions. The majority of Coexistence Approach studies make use of the Palaeoflora database (the combination of which will be abbreviated to CA + PF). Testing results produced by CA + PF studies has been hindered by the general unavailability of the contents in the underlying Palaeoflora database; two exceptions are the mean-annual temperature tolerances and lists of assigned associations between fossils and nearest-living relatives. Using a recently published study on the Eocene of China, which provides the first and only insight into the data structure of the Palaeoflora database, we compare the theory and practice of Coexistence Approach using the Palaeoflora database (CA + PF). We show that CA + PF is riddled by association and climate data error. We reveal flaws in the application of the Coexistence Approach, which is often in stark contrast to the theory of the method. We show that CA + PF is highly vulnerable against numerous sources of errors, mainly because it lacks safeguards that could identify unreliable data. We demonstrate that the CA + PF produces coherent, pseudo-precise results even for artificially generated, random plant assemblages. Alternative MCR-NLR methods can surpass the most imminent deficits of the Coexistence Approach, and may be used as a stop-gap until more accurate bioclimatic and distribution data on potential Eurasian NLRs, and theoretically and statistically robust methods will become available. Finally, general guidelines are provided for the future application of methods using the mutual climatic range with nearest living relatives approach when reconstructing climate from plant fossil assemblages.

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The African monsoon during the early Eocene from the DeepMIP simulations

Williams

Lunt

Salzmann

et al. 2022

Preprint

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The early Eocene (˜56-48 million years ago) is characterised by high CO 2 estimates (1200-2500 ppmv) and elevated global temperatures (˜10 to 16°C higher than modern). However, the response of the hydrological cycle during the early Eocene is poorly constrained, especially in regions with sparse data coverage (e.g. Africa). Here we present a study of African hydroclimate during the early Eocene, as simulated by an ensemble of state-of-the-art climate models in the Deep-time Model Intercomparison Project (DeepMIP). A comparison between the DeepMIP pre-industrial simulations and modern observations suggests that model biases are model-and geographically dependent, however these biases are reduced in the model ensemble mean. A comparison between the Eocene simulations and the pre-industrial suggests that there is no obvious wetting or drying trend as the CO 2 increases. The results suggest that changes to the land sea mask (relative to modern) in the models may be responsible for the simulated increases in precipitation to the north of Eocene Africa, whereas it is likely that changes in vegetation in the models are responsible for the simulated region of drying over equatorial Eocene Africa. There is an increase in precipitation over equatorial and West Africa and associated drying over northern Africa as CO 2 rises. There are also important dynamical 1

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Eocene monsoon prevalence over China: A paleobotanical perspective

Cited by 112 publications

References 48 publications

Transitivity of the climate–vegetation system in a warm climate

Transitivity of the climate–vegetation system in a warm climate

Fables and foibles: A critical analysis of the Palaeoflora database and the Coexistence Approach for palaeoclimate reconstruction

The African monsoon during the early Eocene from the DeepMIP simulations

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