Journal Article

The PRISM4 (mid-Piacenzian) paleoenvironmental reconstruction

Dowsett, Harry, Moucha, Robert, Foley, Kevin, Haywood, Alan, Salzmann, Ulrich, Robinson, Marci, Rowley, David, Mitrovica, Jerry X., Chandler, Mark, Dolan, Aisling, Pound, Matthew, Forte, Alessandro M.

2016

Overview

The mid-Piacenzian is known as a period of relative warmth when compared to the present day. A comprehensive understanding of conditions during the Piacenzian serves as both a conceptual model and a source for boundary conditions as well as means of verification of global climate model experiments. In this paper we present the PRISM4 reconstruction, a paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the mid-Piacenzian ( ∼  3 Ma) containing data for paleogeography, land and sea ice, sea-surface temperature, vegetation, soils, and lakes. Our retrodicted paleogeography takes into account glacial isostatic adjustments and changes in dynamic topography. Soils and lakes, both significant as land surface features, are introduced to the PRISM reconstruction for the first time. Sea-surface temperature and vegetation reconstructions are unchanged but now have confidence assessments. The PRISM4 reconstruction is being used as boundary condition data for the Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project Phase 2 (PlioMIP2) experiments.

• Publisher: Copernicus GmbH,Copernicus Publications
• Subject: 21st century / Boundary conditions / Climate / Climate models / Datasets / Dynamic topography / Ecosystems / General circulation models / Geology / Global climate / Global climate models / Intercomparison / Lakes / Ocean temperature / open climate campaign / Paleogeography / Pliocene / Reconstruction / Reconstruction period-US / Sea ice / Sea ice temperatures / Sea surface temperature / Simulation / Soil / Soil dynamics / Soil temperature / Soils / Stratigraphy / Surface temperature / Temperature / Time series / Topography / Vegetation