Haywood AM, Dowsett HJ, Dolan AM. Integrating geological archives and climate models for the mid-Pliocene warm period.
Nat Commun 2016;
7:10646. [PMID:
26879640 PMCID:
PMC4757764 DOI:
10.1038/ncomms10646]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 121] [Impact Index Per Article: 15.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/01/2015] [Accepted: 01/07/2016] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
The mid-Pliocene Warm Period (mPWP), analogous to future climate conditions, is considered a test-bed for the predictive capability of climate models. Here, Dowsett et al. review our understanding of the mPWP and discuss recent and future advances in the context of proxy data/model integration.
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.
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