PALEO-PGEM-Series: A spatial time series of the global climate over the last 5 million years (Plio-Pleistocene)

Barreto, Elisa; Holden, Philip B.; Edwards, Neil R. and Rangel, Thiago F. (2023). PALEO-PGEM-Series: A spatial time series of the global climate over the last 5 million years (Plio-Pleistocene). Global Ecology and Biogeography, 32(7) pp. 1034–1045.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.13683

Abstract

Motivation
Climate change plays an important role in the generation and maintenance of biodiversity by driving processes such as diversification and range shifts. As a result, biodiversity patterns are often found to carry the imprints of paleoclimatic changes. However, we still know little about the spatial and temporal variation in climate over the scale of millennia affecting eco-evolutionary dynamics, mostly because of the scarcity of user-friendly and freely available spatiotemporal paleoclimate series at such temporal scales. Here we address this gap by presenting PALEO-PGEM-Series, a global spatiotemporal dataset of the last 5 Ma, with 1 ka resolution, spatially downscaled from emulations performed with the intermediate complexity atmosphere-ocean general circulation model PALEO-PGEM. PALEO-PGEM-Series holds the potential to advance our understanding of the mechanisms behind the strong relationship between biodiversity and climate, a pressing need given projected biodiversity responses to anthropogenic climatic change.

Main Types of Variables Contained
Spatio-temporal series of monthly temperature and precipitation and 17 derived bioclimatic variables over the Pliocene–Pleistocene, along with standard error estimates from multiple runs of the emulator.

Spatial Location and Grain
Global landmasses, at 1° × 1°.

Time Period and Grain
Last 5 Myr at 1000 year resolution.

Major Taxa and Level of Measurement
Not applicable.

Software Format
Tab-delimited text files and accompanying R code to derive bioclimatic variables.

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