Vegetation Feedback at the Mid-Pliocene

Abstract

A global atmospheric general circulation model and an asynchronously coupled global atmosphere- biome model are used to simulate vegetation feedback at the mid-Pliocene approximately 3.3 to 3.0 million years ago. For that period, the simulated vegetation differed from present conditions at 62% of the global ice-free land surface. Vegetation feedback had little overall impact on the global climate of the mid-Pliocene. At the regional scale, however, the interactive vegetation led to statistically significant increases in annual temperature over Greenland, the high latitudes of North America, the mid-high latitudes of eastern Eurasia, and western Tibet, and reductions in most of the land areas at low latitudes, owing to vegetation-induced changes in surface albedo.

Keywords:

• mid-Pliocene
• vegetation feedback
• model