A low-frequency summer temperature reconstruction for the United States Southwest, 3000 BC–AD 2000
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12267684 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Andrew Gillreath-Brown (0000-0002-2272-5542, Washington State University, corresponding author), R Kyle Bocinsky (0000-0003-1862-3428, University of Montana), T A Kohler (0000-0002-3414-6660, Washington State University) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 451-466 |
| Publication date | 2024-01-06 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Holocene (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0959-6836 • E-ISSN: 1477-0911 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/09596836231219482 |
| OpenAlex | W4390638987 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 149 |
Temperature variability likely played an important role in determining the spread and productive potential of North America’s key prehispanic agricultural staple, maize. The United States Southwest (SWUS) also served as the gateway for maize to reach portions of North America to the north and east. Existing temperature reconstructions for the SWUS are typically low in spatial or temporal resolution, shallow in time depth, or subject to unknown degrees of insensitivity to low-frequency variability, hindering accurate determination of temperature’s role in agricultural productivity and variability in distribution and success of prehispanic farmers. Here, we develop a model-based modern analog technique (MAT) approach applied to 29 SWUS fossil pollen sites to reconstruct July temperatures from 3000 BC to AD 2000. Temperatures were generally warmer than or similar to those of the modern (1961–1990) period until the first century AD. Our reconstruction also notes rapid warming beginning in the AD 1800s; modern conditions are unprecedented in at least the last five millennia in the SWUS. Temperature minima were reached around 1800 BC, 1000 BC, AD 400 (the global minimum in this series), the mid-to-late AD 900s, and the AD 1500s. Summer temperatures were generally depressed relative to northern hemisphere norms by a dominance of El Niño-like conditions during much of the second millenium BC and the first millenium AD, but somewhat elevated relative to those same norms in other periods, including from about AD 1300 to the present, due to the dominance of La Niña-like conditions
Archaeology · Biology · Climatology · Dominance (genetics · Geography · Northern Hemisphere · Physical geography · Pollen · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Environmental Science · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research · Tree-ring climate responses · Ecology · Geology
Radiocarbon evidence over the apparent grand solar minimum around 400 BCE
Settlement persistence in the prehispanic central Mesa Verde Region
How Maize Farmers in the US Southwest Grew and Prospered Under El Niño but Suffered Under La Niña
How Many People Lived in the Chaco Regional System, and Why It Matters
The Anasazi in a changing environment
An annually resolved bristlecone pine carbon isotope chronology for the last millennium
San Agustin Plains, New Mexico
A Middle Wisconsin Pollen Record from Hay Lake, Arizona
A 35,000 Year Vegetation and Climate History from Potato Lake, Mogollon Rim, Arizona
A Holocene Paleoclimatic and Environmental Record from Stoneman Lake, Arizona
Development of the mixed conifer forest in northern New Mexico and its relationship to Holocene environmental change
The Neotoma Paleoecology Database, a multiproxy, international, community-curated data resource
Post-glacial landscape response to climate variability in the southeastern San Juan Mountains of Colorado, USA
Evolving Complexity and Environmental Risk in the Prehistoric Southwest
Archaeology of the Mimbres Region Southwestern New Mexico U.S.A.
The Jackknife, the Bootstrap and Other Resampling Plans
Twenty-first century approaches to ancient problems
Physiographically sensitive mapping of climatological temperature and precipitation across the conterminous United States
Variability of El Niño/Southern Oscillation activity at millennial timescales during the Holocene epoch
The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland
Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years
Modern Analogs in Quaternary Paleoecology
A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years
Unprecedented 21st century drought risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains
Robust Locally Weighted Regression and Smoothing Scatterplots
Low-Frequency Signals in Long Tree-Ring Chronologies for Reconstructing Past Temperature Variability
North American drought
Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia
Mid- to Late Holocene climate change
Megadroughts in North America
Quantitative Interpretation of Fossil Pollen Spectra
Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data
El Niño variability off Peru during the last 20,000 years
A 2,000-year reconstruction of the rain-fed maize agricultural niche in the US Southwest
Long and spatially variable Neolithic Demographic Transition in the North American Southwest
Diatoms and pH reconstruction
Global Signatures and Dynamical Origins of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Anomaly
Global non-linear effect of temperature on economic production
Flexible paleoclimate age-depth models using an autoregressive gamma process
Climate change through a poverty lens
Unfamiliar Territory
Holocene vegetation and fire reconstructions from the Aquarius Plateau, Utah, USA
The nutritional context of the Pueblo III depopulation of the northern San Juan
Pollen accumulation in lake sediments during historic spruce beetle disturbances in subalpine forests of southern Utah, USA
A modern analogue of western United States summer palaeoclimate at 6000 years before present
The 'segment length curse' in long tree-ring chronology development for palaeoclimatic studies
Climate and social change at the start of the Late Antique Little Ice Age
Differences in forest composition following two periods of settlement by pre-Columbian Native Americans
Some thoughts on the factors that controlled prehistoric maize production in the American Southwest with application to southwestern Colorado
The stable and radio-isotope chemistry of southeastern Utah Basketmaker II burials
How Warm Was the Medieval Warm Period
Seeking The Center Place
La Jolla Natural Radiocarbon Measurements III
Yale Natural Radiocarbon Measurements IX
University of Wisconsin Radiocarbon Dates VII
University of Wisconsin Radiocarbon Dates II
University of Wisconsin Radiocarbon Dates III
The IntCal20 Northern Hemisphere Radiocarbon Age Calibration Curve (0–55 cal kBP)
Sources of Variation in the Southwestern Tree-Ring Record
The Hohokam of Southwest North America
Climate Change 2022 - Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
Uniform Probability Density Analysis and Population History in the Northern Rio Grande
The Social Consequences of Climate Change in the Central Mesa Verde Region
Revisiting Hohokam Paleodemography
Human Behavior, Demography, and Paleoenvironment on the Colorado Plateaus
Climate Change and the Neolithic in the American Southwest
| Citations per year | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2024 - 2025 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |