Influence of topography on tropical African vegetation coverage

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• 作者：Gerlinde Jung ; Matthias Prange ; Michael Schulz
• 关键词：Global climate modelling ; African vegetation ; Topography ; Paleoclimate ; Late Miocene
• 刊名：Climate Dynamics
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：April 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：46
• 期：7-8
• 页码：2535-2549
• 全文大小：4,751 KB
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• 作者单位：Gerlinde Jung (1)
  Matthias Prange (1) (2)
  Michael Schulz (1) (2)
  
  1. MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, 28334, Bremen, Germany
  2. Faculty of Geosciences, University of Bremen, 28334, Bremen, Germany
  
• 刊物类别：Earth and Environmental Science
• 刊物主题：Earth sciences
  Geophysics and Geodesy
  Meteorology and Climatology
  Oceanography
  
• 出版者：Springer Berlin / Heidelberg
• ISSN：1432-0894

文摘

Hominid evolution in the late Miocene has long been hypothesized to be linked to the retreat of the tropical rainforest in Africa. One cause for the climatic and vegetation change often considered was uplift of Africa, but also uplift of the Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau was suggested to have impacted rainfall distribution over Africa. Recent proxy data suggest that in East Africa open grassland habitats were available to the common ancestors of hominins and apes long before their divergence and do not find evidence for a closed rainforest in the late Miocene. We used the coupled global general circulation model CCSM3 including an interactively coupled dynamic vegetation module to investigate the impact of topography on African hydro-climate and vegetation. We performed sensitivity experiments altering elevations of the Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau as well as of East and Southern Africa. The simulations confirm the dominant impact of African topography for climate and vegetation development of the African tropics. Only a weak influence of prescribed Asian uplift on African climate could be detected. The model simulations show that rainforest coverage of Central Africa is strongly determined by the presence of elevated African topography. In East Africa, despite wetter conditions with lowered African topography, the conditions were not favorable enough to maintain a closed rainforest. A discussion of the results with respect to other model studies indicates a minor importance of vegetation–atmosphere or ocean–atmosphere feedbacks and a large dependence of the simulated vegetation response on the land surface/vegetation model.