Articles | Volume 19, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-517-2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-517-2023
Research article
 | 
27 Feb 2023
Research article |  | 27 Feb 2023

On the importance of moisture conveyor belts from the tropical eastern Pacific for wetter conditions in the Atacama Desert during the mid-Pliocene

Mark Reyers, Stephanie Fiedler, Patrick Ludwig, Christoph Böhm, Volker Wennrich, and Yaping Shao

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Cited articles

Amidon, W. H., Fisher, G. B., Burbank, D. W., Ciccioli, P. L., Alonso, R. N., Gorin, A. L., Silverhart, P. H., Kylander-Clark, A. R. C., and Christoffersen, M. S.: Mio-Pliocene aridity in the south-central Andes associated with Southern Hemisphere cold periods, P. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 114, 6474–6479, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1700327114, 2017. 
Amundson, R., Dietrich, W., Bellugi, D., Ewing, S., Nishiizumi, K., Chong, G., Owen, J., Finkel, R., Heimsath, A., Stewart, B., and Caffee, M.: Geomorphologic evidence for the late Pliocene onset of hyperaridity in the Atacama Desert, Geol. Soc. Am. Bull., 124, 1048–1070, https://doi.org/10.1130/B30445.1, 2012. 
Bartz, M., Walk, J., Binnie, S. A., Brill, D., Stauch, G., Lehmkuhl, F., Hoffmeister, D., and Brückner, H.: Late Pleistocene alluvial fan evolution along the coastal Atacama Desert (N Chile), Global Planet. Change, 190, 10309, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2019.103091, 2020. 
Bauer, S. E., Tsigaridis, K., Faluvegi, G., Kelley, M., Lo, K. K., Miller, R. L., Nazarenko, L., Schmidt, G. A., and Wu, J.: Historical (1850–2014) aerosol evolution and role on climate forcing using the GISS ModelE2.1 contribution to CMIP6, J. Adv. Model. Earth Sy., 12, e2019MS001978, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019MS001978, 2020. 
Böhm, C., Reyers, M., Herbert, S., and Crewell, S.: Water vapor variability in the Atacama Desert during the 20th century, Global Planet. Change, 190, 103192, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2020.103192, 2020. 
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Short summary
In this study we performed high-resolution climate model simulations for the hyper-arid Atacama Desert for the mid-Pliocene (3.2 Ma). The aim is to uncover the atmospheric processes that are involved in the enhancement of strong rainfall events during this period. We find that strong upper-level moisture fluxes (so-called moisture conveyor belts) originating in the tropical eastern Pacific are the main driver for increased rainfall in the mid-Pliocene.