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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 10: Posters I
DY 10.46: Poster
Montag, 14. März 2011, 17:00–19:00, P4
Large-scale transitions in Plio-Pleistocene African dust flux dynamics identified by recurrence network analysis — Jonathan F. Donges1,2, •Reik V. Donner1, Martin H. Trauth3, Norbert Marwan1, and Jürgen Kurths1,2 — 1Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany — 2Department of Physics, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany — 3Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Potsdam, Germany
These days, long-term environmental changes are believed to have acted as a key factor in the evolutionary history of the human race. For the Plio-Pleistocene climate history of East Africa (the "cradle of mankind"), recent studies on terrestrial as well as marine paleoclimate archives suggested different possible climatic forcing mechanisms. Here, we apply recurrence network analysis, a novel nonlinear statistical technique, to three distinct marine records of terrigeneous dust flux. Our method identifies subtle, but robust transitions between qualitatively different types of dust flux dynamics at about (i) 3.45-3.05, (ii) 2.1-1.7, and (iii) 1.2-0.7 Myr BP, which reflect changes in the variability of environmental conditions in North and East Africa. The timing of the identified transition periods reveals both low- and high-latitude climatic changes as possible dynamic origins of the observed regime shifts, the sources of which are identified and critically discussed.