Articles | Volume 20, issue 7
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-20-1595-2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-20-1595-2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| 
25 Jul 2024
Research article |
| 25 Jul 2024
| 25 Jul 2024
Dynamic interaction between lakes, climate, and vegetation across northern Africa during the mid-Holocene
Nora Farina Specht
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Bundesstrasse 53, 20146 Hamburg, Germany
Martin Claussen
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Bundesstrasse 53, 20146 Hamburg, Germany
Meteorological Institute, Centrum für Erdsystemforschung und Nachhaltigkeit (CEN), Universität Hamburg, Bundesstrasse 55, 20146 Hamburg, Germany
Thomas Kleinen
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Bundesstrasse 53, 20146 Hamburg, Germany
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Palaeoenvironmental records only provide a fragmentary picture of the lake and wetland extent in North Africa during the mid-Holocene. Therefore, we investigate the possible range of mid-Holocene precipitation changes caused by an estimated small and maximum lake extent and a maximum wetland extent. Results show a particularly strong monsoon precipitation response to lakes and wetlands over the Western Sahara and an increased monsoon precipitation when replacing lakes with vegetated wetlands.
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Philipp de Vrese, Tobias Stacke, Thomas Kleinen, and Victor Brovkin
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Short summary
We close the terrestrial water cycle across the Sahara and Sahel by integrating a new endorheic-lake model into a climate model. A factor analysis of mid-Holocene simulations shows that both dynamic lakes and dynamic vegetation individually contribute to a precipitation increase over northern Africa that is collectively greater than that caused by the interaction between lake and vegetation dynamics. Thus, the lake–vegetation interaction causes a relative drying response across the entire Sahel.
We close the terrestrial water cycle across the Sahara and Sahel by integrating a new...
