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On Climatic Analogs in Paleoclimatic Reconstruction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Reid A. Bryson
Reid A. Bryson*
Affiliation:
Center for Climatic Research, Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706 USA
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Abstract

Many of the problems that have been discussed with regard to the analog approach to paleoclimatic reconstruction may be illustrated by consideration of basic principles and definitions, and the logical consquences thereof. Specific attention is directed toward the definition of the regional macroclimate as the modal microclimate and to a series of axioms: (1) There are various microclimates which depart more or less from the macroclimate in each terrestrial region. (2) Environment and climate change on time scales from near instantaneous to millions of years. (3) Climate is multidimensional (a vector), not a single scalar datum. (4) Biotic assemblage changes in response to environmental (including climatic) changes are expressed primarily in terms of reproductive success. One may conclude from the corollaries to these axioms that perfect analogs cannot be found for any Holocene climate, but that “partial analogs” (“transfer equations”) may still be used if allowance is made for shared variance.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , May 1985 , pp. 275 - 286
Copyright
University of Washington

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