Millennial-scale temperature change velocity in the continental northern Neotropics.

ABSTRACT: Climate has been inherently linked to global diversity patterns, and yet no empirical data are available to put modern climate change into a millennial-scale context. High tropical species diversity has been linked to slow rates of climate change during the Quaternary, an assumption that lacks an empirical foundation. Thus, there is the need for quantifying the velocity at which the bioclimatic space changed during the Quaternary in the tropics. Here we present rates of climate change for the late Pleistocene and Holocene from Mexico and Guatemala. An extensive modern pollen survey and fossil pollen data from two long sedimentary records (30,000 and 86,000 years for highlands and lowlands, respectively) were used to estimate past temperatures. Derived temperature profiles show a parallel l

SUBMITTER: Correa-Metrio A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3846729 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature