Abstract

MAENZA, Reinaldo A; COMPAGNUCCI, Rosa H  and  ARIZTEGUI, Daniel. Echo-g outputs of the 1000hpa zonal wind and temperature fields over southern South America for the last millennium. Geoacta [online]. 2013, vol.38, n.1. ISSN 1852-7744.

Important climatic variations have occurred during the last millennium. After the "Medieval Warming" period, a long period of cold conditions, called "Little Ice Age", took place, being followed by the current "Global Warming". Transient scenarios have been developed using the General Circulation Model ECHO-G to simulate the monthly anomalies for the period 1000-1990 AD. Firstly, the research analyses the ability of ECHO-G model to reproduce the temperature and zonal wind component at 1000hPa over southern South America in the period 1961-1990 to contrast the outputs with the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis data. The difference of means and standard deviations has been tested for both temperature and zonal wind. In central-north Argentina, ECHO-G simulates higher temperatures than the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis. However, the differences between model and reanalysis are smaller in the Patagonia region, especially close to the Cardiel Lake. Hence, extended simulations for the last millennium can be used to analyse paleoclimatic variations in such region. Although anomaly patterns between Maünder and Dalton solar Minimums are similar with respect to the 1960-1990 period, their amplitudes are higher for the Maünder Minimum. The alternating light and dark laminae (annual rythmites or varves) from the Cardiel Lake sediments in central Patagonia were previously interpreted as the result of regional wind intensity variations. In this work their thickness time series has been compared with the local zonal wind component and temperature time series at 1000hPa in the period 1000 AD and 1990 AD. A centered 80-years moving average has been applied to these time series to enhance the effect of the Gleissberg solar cycle and other lower frequency periodicities. The results show a reverse relationship between the zonal wind component and the thickness of the dark laminae. Such an inference is confirmed employing Coherence Wavelet Spectrum between the time series. The latter indicates that the thickness of the dark laminae can be used as a proxy for the strengthening of the zonal wind component over Patagonia.

Keywords : GCM ECHO-G; NCEP-NCAR; Maünder Minimum; Dalton Minimum; Patagonia.

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