TY - JOUR
T1 - Temperature variability over Africa during the last 2000 years
AU - Nicholson, Sharon E.
AU - Nash, David J.
AU - Chase, Brian M.
AU - Grab, Stefan W.
AU - Shanahan, Timothy M.
AU - Verschuren, Dirk
AU - Asrat, Asfawossen
AU - Lézine, Anne Marie
AU - Umer, Mohammed
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank PAGES for financial support of an Africa2k workshop held in Ghent in 2010, when the idea for this study was first discussed. BM Chase was further supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC Starting Grant ‘HYRAX’, grant agreement no. 258657. SE Nicholson was supported by NSF Grant 1158984 and NOAA Project NAO80AR4310731.
PY - 2013/8
Y1 - 2013/8
N2 - A growing number of proxy, historical and instrumental data sets are now available from continental Africa through which past variations in temperature can be assessed. This paper, co-authored by members of the PAGES Africa2k Working Group, synthesises published material to produce a record of temperature variability for Africa as a whole spanning the last 2000 years. The paper focuses on temperature variability during the 'Medieval Climate Anomaly' (MCA), 'Little Ice Age' (LIA) and late 19th-early 21st centuries. Warmer conditions during the MCA are evident in records from Lake Tanganyika in central Africa, the Ethiopian Highlands in northeastern Africa, and Cango Cave, the Kuiseb River and Wonderkrater in southern Africa. Other records covering the MCA give ambiguous signals. Warming appears to have been greater during the early MCA (c. ad 1000) in parts of southern Africa and during the later MCA (from ad 1100) in Namibia, Ethiopia and at Lake Tanganyika. LIA cooling is evident in Ethiopian and southern African pollen records and in organic biomarker data from Lake Malawi in southeastern tropical Africa, while at Lake Tanganyika the temperature depression appears to have been less consistent. A warming trend in mean annual temperatures is clearly evident from historical and instrumental data covering the late 19th to early 21st centuries. General warming has occurred over Africa since the 1880s punctuated only by a period of cooling in the mid 20th century. The rate of temperature increase appears to have accelerated towards the end of the 20th century. The few long high-resolution proxy records that extend into the late 20th century indicate that average annual temperatures were 1-2°C higher in the last few decades than during the MCA.
AB - A growing number of proxy, historical and instrumental data sets are now available from continental Africa through which past variations in temperature can be assessed. This paper, co-authored by members of the PAGES Africa2k Working Group, synthesises published material to produce a record of temperature variability for Africa as a whole spanning the last 2000 years. The paper focuses on temperature variability during the 'Medieval Climate Anomaly' (MCA), 'Little Ice Age' (LIA) and late 19th-early 21st centuries. Warmer conditions during the MCA are evident in records from Lake Tanganyika in central Africa, the Ethiopian Highlands in northeastern Africa, and Cango Cave, the Kuiseb River and Wonderkrater in southern Africa. Other records covering the MCA give ambiguous signals. Warming appears to have been greater during the early MCA (c. ad 1000) in parts of southern Africa and during the later MCA (from ad 1100) in Namibia, Ethiopia and at Lake Tanganyika. LIA cooling is evident in Ethiopian and southern African pollen records and in organic biomarker data from Lake Malawi in southeastern tropical Africa, while at Lake Tanganyika the temperature depression appears to have been less consistent. A warming trend in mean annual temperatures is clearly evident from historical and instrumental data covering the late 19th to early 21st centuries. General warming has occurred over Africa since the 1880s punctuated only by a period of cooling in the mid 20th century. The rate of temperature increase appears to have accelerated towards the end of the 20th century. The few long high-resolution proxy records that extend into the late 20th century indicate that average annual temperatures were 1-2°C higher in the last few decades than during the MCA.
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U2 - 10.1177/0959683613483618
DO - 10.1177/0959683613483618
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84879812323
VL - 23
SP - 1085
EP - 1094
JO - Holocene
JF - Holocene
SN - 0959-6836
IS - 8
ER -