Integrating geological archives and climate models for the mid-Pliocene warm period.

Alan M Haywood,Aisling M Dolan,Harry J Dowsett

doi:10.1038/ncomms10646

Alan M Haywood, Aisling M Dolan + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10646

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Abstract

The mid-Pliocene Warm Period (mPWP) offers an opportunity to understand a warmer-than-present world and assess the predictive ability of numerical climate models. Environmental reconstruction and climate modelling are crucial for understanding the mPWP, and the synergy of these two, often disparate, fields has proven essential in confirming features of the past and in turn building confidence in projections of the future. The continual development of methodologies to better facilitate environmental synthesis and data/model comparison is essential, with recent work demonstrating that time-specific (time-slice) syntheses represent the next logical step in exploring climate change during the mPWP and realizing its potential as a test bed for understanding future climate change.

Highlights

The mid-Pliocene Warm Period offers an opportunity to understand a warmer-thanpresent world and assess the predictive ability of numerical climate models
The Pliocene Epoch (5.33– 2.58 Ma) is attractive with respect to understanding future climate due to many shared similarities with regards to Earth’s physical characteristics. Both palaeoenvironmental reconstructions and climate modelling have been pivotal in increasing our understanding of climate and its importance during the mid-Pliocene Warm Period (mPWP: 3.264–3.025 Ma; referred to as the ‘Pliocene Research, Interpretation and Synoptic Mapping (PRISM) interval’)
We show how data have progressed from providing boundary conditions for numerical models to a means of assessing the efficacy of model simulations of the mPWP climate

Summary

Gauss mPWP

MG1, M2, M1, KM5, KM3, KM2, KM1, K1, G21and G20 are shown. The initial PRISM reconstruction was confined to the North Atlantic region. Given early reconstructions of atmospheric CO2 concentration higher than the pre-industrial[3,4,49], which have been supported by more recent studies[50], the lack of tropical SST warming in areas outside the upwelling zones has proven puzzling This was one reason enhanced meridional ocean heat transport was suggested on the basis of reconstructed mPWP SST gradients[42]. Wara et al.[51] developed Mg/Ca-based sea surface temperature (SST) records from calcareous tests of surface-dwelling planktonic foraminifers These time series span the Pliocene to Recent at Ocean Drilling Program Sites 847 in the eastern equatorial Pacific (EEP) and 806 in the WEP (Fig. 2). This highlights the need for further study, while at the same time anticipating divergent views, given the aforementioned signal to uncertainty ratio

Rangitikei R

Palaeoclimate model simulations

Very high

Findings

Additional information