Quaternary history from the U.S. tropics

Abstract

This chapter describes a few major issues in tropical climate history, sea level, and biogeography, focusing on data from islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean associated with the United States. The tropical latitudes yield an increasing understanding of changes in sea level, climate, biogeography, and human migrations during the Quaternary, and several lines of evidence suggest that the northeast trade winds persisted during the late Quaternary in the Hawaiian Islands. A new generation of coupled atmosphere–ocean climate models is using the new paleoclimatic data for exploring the global implications of tropical climate change and teleconnections arising from the sources of finer-scale climate variability, such as El Ni o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). Paleoecological and archaeological records show clearly that humans have dramatic direct effects on the ecosystems they inhabit. Indirect effects are likely to be even more pervasive than direct effects on the environment. Tropical islands have intertwined biological, physical, and cultural histories that foreshadow global issues.