Climate Change in Southern South America During the Last Two Millennia

MOY, C.M.; MORENO, P.I.; DUNBAR, R.B.; KAPLAN, M.R.; FRANCOIS, J-P.; VILLALBA, R.; HABERZETTL, T.

Past Climate Variability in South America and Surrounding Regions

SPRINGER

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2009; p. 353 - 393

Paleoclimate records from southern South America can be used to address important questions regarding the timing and nature of late-Holocene climate variability. During the last 30 years, many areas of southern South America have experienced rapid climatic and ecological changes that are driven by global and hemispheric-scale ocean-atmosphere processes. In order to place these recent changes in a longer-term context, we first present an overview of the modern climate processes relevant for the interpretation of paleoclimate records in southern South America, and then review records that have been developed from various archives that span the last two thousand years. Multiple paleoclimate records provide evidence for an overall decrease in temperature and an increase in westerly wind intensity that culminates in the last few hundred years during the time of the European Little Ice Age.We also find evidence for aridity generally coincident with the Medieval Climate Anomaly in several paleoclimate archives. Although much work has been done in this region, high-resolution well-dated archives are still needed from sensitive locations to improve our understanding of past and present climate change. From the paleoclimate records that we have compiled, we infer that warming, retreat of glaciers, and reconfiguration of precipitation patterns during the past century is unique within the context of the last 2000 years.