Vegetation Feedback at the Mid-Pliocene

A global atmospheric general circulation model and an asynchronously coupled global atmosphere-biome model are used to simulate vegetation feedback at the mid-Pliocene approximately 3.3 to 3.0 million years ago.For that period,the simulated vegetation differed from present conditions at 62%of the global ice-free land surface.Vegetation feedback had little overall impact on the global climate of the mid-Pliocene.At the regional scale,however,the interactive vegetation led to statistically significant increases in annual temperature over Greenland,the high latitudes of North America,the mid-high latitudes of eastern Eurasia,and western Tibet,and reductions in most of the land areas at low latitudes,owing to vegetation-induced changes in surface albedo.