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| Titel |
Impact of precession on the climate, vegetation and fire activity in southern Africa during MIS4 |
| VerfasserIn |
M.-N. Woillez, G. Levavasseur, A.-L. Daniau, M. Kageyama, D. H. Urrego, M.-F. Sánchez-Goñi, V. Hanquiez |
| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| ISSN |
1814-9324
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| Digitales Dokument |
URL |
| Erschienen |
In: Climate of the Past ; 10, no. 3 ; Nr. 10, no. 3 (2014-06-18), S.1165-1182 |
| Datensatznummer |
250116984
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 copernicus.org/cp-10-1165-2014.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| The relationships between climate, vegetation and fires are a
major subject of investigation in the context of climate change. In
southern Africa, fire is known to play a crucial role in the
existence of grasslands and Mediterranean-type
biomes. Microcharcoal-based reconstructions of past fire activity in
that region have shown a tight correlation between grass-fueled fires and the
precessional cycle, with maximum fire activity during maxima of the
climatic precession index. These changes have been interpreted as the
result of changes in fuel load in response to precipitation changes in eastern southern
Africa. Here we
use the general circulation model IPSL_CM5A (Institut Pierre Simon Laplace Climate Model version 5A) and the dynamic
vegetation model LPJ-LMfire to investigate the response of climate,
vegetation and fire activity to precession changes in southern Africa
during marine isotopic stage 4 (74–59 kyr BP). We perform two climatic simulations, for a
maximum and minimum of the precession index, and use a statistical
downscaling method to increase the spatial resolution of the
IPSL_CM5A outputs over southern Africa and perform high-resolution
simulations of the vegetation and fire activity.
Our results show an anticorrelation between the northern and southern
African monsoons in response to precession changes. A decrease of the
precession climatic index leads to a precipitation decrease in the
summer rainfall area of southern Africa. The drying of climate leads
to a decrease of vegetation cover and fire activity. Our results are
in qualitative agreement with data and confirm that fire activity in
southern Africa during MIS4 is mainly driven by vegetation cover. |
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