Climates of the Southern Continents: Present, Past and Future
Climates of the Southern Continents: Present, Past and Future – Review
The southern continents, which we can define as those areas south of the edge of the humid humid forests, are a fairly varied lot ecologically. Whereas South America, New Zealand and Antarctica strongly resemble the greatly enriched natures of the northern hemisphere, Australia and Southern Africa are entirely different, retaining the oligotrophic personality of periods when the Earth was entirely glacier-free and having much more variable and sensitive ecologies able to support only small population densities. In names of paleoclimatology, the southern continents, owing to the fact that for mysterious reasons sub-Amazonian South America never had a single domesticable crop plant, are not as well studied as the Northern Hemisphere. Studying Australia’s ecology at Melbourne University I was perplexed as to why scientists were unable to demonstrate whether rainfall declines in southern Australia and increases in northwestern and central-western Australia that have occurred since 1967 were unique in the Quaternary. Whilst I now have an fully understanding of the uselessness of tree rings in names of the erratic tree-growth patterns in dry Australia, “Climates of the Southern Continents: Present, Past and Future” is still a most notable study of the climatic record of an full hemisphere. Most revealing for me were the revelation that global warming is almost certainly to blame for rainfall changes in southwestern Australia – due to naval work done in the late 1980s. Nonetheless, there was much more information than that still regarding rainfall in southwestern Australia, with evidence for a very rainy period in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries A.D. There is also a good exchange of information, though less surprising, about the climatic story of Southern Africa ever since the ice age. The features of the extraordinarily diverse Cape Floristic Region are particularly interesting. Regarding the “enriched” southern hemisphere continents, there are equally fine details about the expansion of glaciers in New Zealand, Southern South America and the equatorial Andes. A key point is the rate of these glaciers as global rather than regional climate records. The development of rainfall belts since European settlement in the semi-arid Chaco and Pampas regions and the Mediterranean region of Central Chile is also discussed especially well. All this adds a good exchange of knowledge that is rarely discussed in the literature on international climate change and is a generally refreshing addition to my understanding of a serious subject for the Earth’s environment. I would very greatly recommend “Climates of the Southern Continents: Present, Past and Future” as a important part of a full climate library.