Kaboth-Bahr, S;
Gosling, WD;
Vogelsang, R;
Bahr, A;
Scerri, EML;
Asrat, A;
Cohen, AS;
... Trauth, MH; + view all
(2021)
Paleo-ENSO influence on African environments and early modern humans.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
, 118
(23)
, Article e2018277118. 10.1073/pnas.2018277118.
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Abstract
In this study, we synthesize terrestrial and marine proxy records, spanning the past 620 ky, to decipher pan-African climate variability and its drivers and potential linkages to hominin evolution. We find a tight correlation between moisture availability across Africa to El Niño Southern Ocean oscillation (ENSO) variability, a manifestation of the Walker Circulation, that was most likely driven by changes in Earth's eccentricity. Our results demonstrate that low-latitude insolation was a prominent driver of pan-African climate change during the Middle to Late Pleistocene. We argue that these low-latitude climate processes governed the dispersion and evolution of vegetation as well as mammals in eastern and western Africa by increasing resource-rich and stable ecotonal settings thought to have been important to early modern humans.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Paleo-ENSO influence on African environments and early modern humans |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1073/pnas.2018277118 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2018277118 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | African paleoclimate, Walker and Hadley circulation, hominin evolution, orbital forcing |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Geography |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10130574 |
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