• Energy Research

Supplement to: Sanchez Goñi, Maria Fernanda; Desprat, Stéphanie; Daniau, Anne-Laure; Bassinot, Franck C; Polanco-Martínez, Josué M; Harrison, Sandy P; Allen, Judy R M; Anderson, R Scott; Behling, Hermann; Bonnefille, Raymonde; Burjachs, Francesc; Carrión, José S; Cheddadi, Rachid; Clark, James S; Combourieu-Nebout, Nathalie; Courtney-Mustaphi, Colin J; DeBusk, Georg H; Dupont, Lydie M; Finch, Jemma M; Fletcher, William J; Giardini, Marco; González, Catalina; Gosling, William D; Grigg, Laurie D; Grimm, Eric C; Hayashi, Ryoma; Helmens, Karin F; Heusser, Linda E; Hill, Trevor R; Hope, Geoffrey; Huntley, Brian; Igarashi, Yaeko; Irino, Tomohisa; Jacobs, Bonnie Fine; Jiménez-Moreno, Gonzalo; Kawai, Sayuri; Kershaw, A Peter; Kumon, Fujio; Lawson, Ian T; Ledru, Marie-Pierre; Lézine, Anne-Marie; Liew, Ping-Mei; Magri, Donatella; Marchant, Robert; Margari, Vasiliki; Mayle, Francis E; McKenzie, G Merna; Moss, Patrick T; Müller, Stefanie; Müller, Ulrich C; Naughton, Filipa; Newnham, Rewi M; Oba, Tadamichi; Pérez-Obiol, Ramon P; Pini, Roberta; Ravazzi, Cesare; Roucoux, Katherine H; Rucina, Stephen M; Scott, Louis; Takahara, Hikaru; Tzedakis, Polychronis C; Urrego, Dunia H; van Geel, Bas; Valencia, Bryan G; Vandergoes, Marcus J; Vincens, Annie; Whitlock, Cathy L; Willard, Debra A; Yamamoto, Masanobu (2017): The ACER pollen and charcoal database: a global resource to document vegetation and fire response to abrupt climate changes during the last glacial period. Earth System Science Data, 9(2), 679-695 Quaternary records provide an opportunity to examine the nature of the vegetation and fire responses to rapid past climate changes comparable in velocity and magnitude to those expected in the 21st century. The best documented examples of rapid climate change in the past are the warming events associated with the Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) cycles during the last glacial period, which were sufficiently large to have had a potential feedback through changes in albedo and greenhouse gas emissions on climate. Previous reconstructions of vegetation and fire changes during the D-O cycles used independently constructed age models, making it difficult to compare the changes between different sites and regions. Here we present the ACER (Abrupt Climate Changes and Environmental Responses) global database which includes 93 pollen records from the last glacial period (73-15 ka) with a temporal resolution better than 1,000 years, 32 of which also provide charcoal records. A harmonized and consistent chronology based on radiometric dating (14C, 234U/230Th, OSL, 40Ar/39Ar dated tephra layers) has been constructed for 86 of these records, although in some cases additional information was derived using common control points based on event stratigraphy. The ACER database compiles metadata including geospatial and dating information, pollen and charcoal counts and pollen percentages of the characteristic biomes, and is archived in Microsoft ACCESS(TM).

Fire activity has varied globally and continuously since the last glacial maximum (LGM) in response to long-term changes in global climate and shorter-term regional changes in climate, vegetation, and human land use. We have synthesized sedimentary charcoal records of biomass burning since the LGM and present global maps showing changes in fire activity for time slices during the past 21,000 years (as differences in charcoal accumulation values compared to pre-industrial). There is strong broad-scale coherence in fire activity after the LGM, but spatial heterogeneity in the signals increases thereafter. In North America, Europe and southern South America, charcoal records indicate less-than-present fire activity during the deglacial period, from 21,000 to ∼11,000 cal yr BP. In contrast, the tropical latitudes of South America and Africa show greater-than-present fire activity from ∼19,000 to ∼17,000 cal yr BP and most sites from Indochina and Australia show greater-than-present fire activity from 16,000 to ∼13,000 cal yr BP. Many sites indicate greater-than-present or near-present activity during the Holocene with the exception of eastern North America and eastern Asia from 8,000 to ∼3,000 cal yr BP, Indonesia and Australia from 11,000 to 4,000 cal yr BP, and southern South America from 6,000 to 3,000 cal yr BP where fire activity was less than present. Regional coherence in the patterns of change in fire activity was evident throughout the post-glacial period. These complex patterns can largely be explained in terms of large-scale climate controls modulated by local changes in vegetation and fuel load.

Abstract. Quaternary records provide an opportunity to examine the nature of the vegetation and fire responses to rapid past climate changes comparable in velocity and magnitude to those expected in the 21st century. The best documented examples of rapid climate change in the past are the warming events associated with the Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) cycles during the last glacial period, which were sufficiently large to have had a potential feedback through changes in albedo and greenhouse gas emissions on climate. Previous reconstructions of vegetation and fire changes during the D-O cycles used independently constructed age models, making it difficult to compare the changes between different sites and regions. Here we present the ACER (Abrupt Climate Changes and Environmental Responses) global database which includes 93 pollen records from the last glacial period (73–15 ka) with a temporal resolution better than 1,000 years, 32 of which also provide charcoal records. A harmonized and consistent chronology based on radiometric dating (14C, 234U/230Th, OSL, 40Ar/39Ar dated tephra layers) has been constructed for 86 of these records, although in some cases additional information was derived using common control points based on event stratigraphy. The ACER database compiles metadata including geospatial and dating information, pollen and charcoal counts and pollen percentages of the characteristic biomes, and is archived in Microsoft AccessTM at doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.870867.