Abstract
Paleoclimatic data are used in eco-evolutionary models to improve knowledge of biogeographical processes that drive patterns of biodiversity through time, opening windows into past climate–biodiversity dynamics. Applying these models to harmonised simulations of past and future climatic change can strengthen forecasts of biodiversity change. StableClim provides continuous estimates of climate stability from 21,000 years ago to 2100 C.E. for ocean and terrestrial realms at spatial scales that include biogeographic regions and climate zones. Climate stability is quantified using annual trends and variabilities in air temperature and precipitation, and associated signal-to-noise ratios. Thresholds of natural variability in trends in regional- and global-mean temperature allow periods in Earth’s history when climatic conditions were warming and cooling rapidly (or slowly) to be identified and climate stability to be estimated locally (grid-cell) during these periods of accelerated change. Model simulations are validated against independent paleoclimate and observational data. Projections of climatic stability, accessed through StableClim, will improve understanding of the roles of climate in shaping past, present-day and future patterns of biodiversity.
Highlights
Background & SummaryA stronger understanding of the relationships between past climatic change and contemporary geographic distributions, and abundances of species, and ecosystem structure and function, can improve capacities to anticipate, and potentially manage responses of biodiversity to rapid future climate change, and global change more generally[1,2]
This research has shown that a primary factor constraining the distributions and diversity of species at macro-scales is climate stability[5,6,7], with hotspots of biodiversity often occurring in regions that have experienced stable temperatures and variable rates of precipitation during the late Pleistocene and Holocene[8,9,10,11]
Pre-industrial, historical, and future climate datasets with global coverages of modelled monthly-mean surface temperature, and monthly precipitation were extracted from the comparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) Earth System Grid Federation data portal using customised bash scripts
Summary
Background & SummaryA stronger understanding of the relationships between past climatic change and contemporary geographic distributions, and abundances of species, and ecosystem structure and function, can improve capacities to anticipate, and potentially manage responses of biodiversity to rapid future climate change, and global change more generally[1,2]. We provide continuous gridded global-scale estimates of centennial trend, variability, and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in temperature and precipitation between 21,000 B.P. and 2100 C.E. We do this by harmonising, at 2.5° spatial resolution (~278 km at the equator), three distinct data sets: paleoclimate simulations from the TraCE-21ka coupled
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