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Past Climate Variability in South America and Surrounding Regions pp 353–393Cite as

Climate Change in Southern South America During the Last Two Millennia

Part of the Developments in Paleoenvironmental Research book series (DPER,volume 14)

Abstract

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.

Keywords

  • South America
  • Patagonia
  • Paleoclimate
  • Southern Hemisphere Westerlies
  • Little Ice Age

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Acknowledgments

C. Moy acknowledges support from a U.S. State Department Fulbright to Chile, Department of Energy Global Change Education Program Graduate Fellowship, and a Stanford School of Earth Sciences McGee grant. P.I. Moreno acknowledges support from the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity P05-002, contract PFB-23 and Fondecyt # 1040204, 1070991, and 1080485. T. Haberzettl acknowledges the support provided by Le Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies (FQRNT). Helpful discussions with Rene Garreaud significantly improved the quality of this manuscript. We thank Andres Rivera for providing precipitation data from I. Evangelistas, which was collected by the Servicio Hidrogrfico de la Armada de Chile (SHOA), and the Direccion General de Aguas (DGA) for the use of Torres del Paine meteorological data. We also thank Antje Schwalb and Cathy Whitlock for providing constructive reviews that greatly improved an earlier version of this manuscript. Figures 15.3 and 15.4 were constructed from NCEP-NCAR reanalysis data available at the NOAA/ESRL Physical Sciences Division, Boulder Colorado from their Web site at http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/. Southern South America base maps (Figs. 15.1, 15.3, and 15.7) were created using an online version of Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) at http://www.aquarius.ifm-geomar.de/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, Stanford University, 450 Serra Mall, Braun Hall (Bldg. 320), 94305-2115, Stanford, CA, USA

    Christopher M. Moy

  2. Department of Ecological Sciences and Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity, Universidad de Chile, Las Palmeras 3425, Ñuñoa, Santiago, Chile

    Patricio I. Moreno, Robert B. Dunbar & Jean-Pierre Francois

  3. Department of Geography and Geology, The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, 94305-2115, Kingston 7, Jamaica

    Michael R. Kaplan

  4. School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Drummond Street, EH8 9XP, Edinburgh, UK

    Michael R. Kaplan

  5. Seminar für Geographie und ihre Didaktik, Universität zu Köln, Gronewaldstraße 2 D-50931, Köln, Germany

    Jean-Pierre Francois

  6. Instituto Argentino de Nivologĺa, Glaciologĺa y Ciencias Ambientales (IANIGLA-CONICET), C.C. 330, 5500, Mendoza, Argentina

    Ricardo Villalba

  7. Institut des sciences de la mer de Rimouski (ISMER), University of Québec at Rimouski, 310, allée des Ursulines, G5L 3A1, Rimouski, Québec, Canada

    Torsten Haberzettl

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  1. Christopher M. Moy
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  2. Patricio I. Moreno
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  4. Michael R. Kaplan
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  5. Jean-Pierre Francois
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  6. Ricardo Villalba
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  7. Torsten Haberzettl
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Correspondence to Christopher M. Moy .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. IRD, CEA-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, 91191, France

    Francoise Vimeux

  2. L'Institut de Recherché pour le, CEREGE, Aix-en-Provence, 13545, France

    Florence Sylvestre

  3. IRD, CEA-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, 91191, France

    Myriam Khodri

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

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Moy, C.M. et al. (2009). Climate Change in Southern South America During the Last Two Millennia. In: Vimeux, F., Sylvestre, F., Khodri, M. (eds) Past Climate Variability in South America and Surrounding Regions. Developments in Paleoenvironmental Research, vol 14. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2672-9_15

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