A Short Guide to the Climatic Variables of the Last Glacial Maximum for Biogeographers

PLoS One. 2015 Jun 11;10(6):e0129037. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0129037. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

Ecological niche models are widely used for mapping the distribution of species during the last glacial maximum (LGM). Although the selection of the variables and General Circulation Models (GCMs) used for constructing those maps determine the model predictions, we still lack a discussion about which variables and which GCM should be included in the analysis and why. Here, we analyzed the climatic predictions for the LGM of 9 different GCMs in order to help biogeographers to select their GCMs and climatic layers for mapping the species ranges in the LGM. We 1) map the discrepancies between the climatic predictions of the nine GCMs available for the LGM, 2) analyze the similarities and differences between the GCMs and group them to help researchers choose the appropriate GCMs for calibrating and projecting their ecological niche models (ENM) during the LGM, and 3) quantify the agreement of the predictions for each bioclimatic variable to help researchers avoid the environmental variables with a poor consensus between models. Our results indicate that, in absolute values, GCMs have a strong disagreement in their temperature predictions for temperate areas, while the uncertainties for the precipitation variables are in the tropics. In spite of the discrepancies between model predictions, temperature variables (BIO1-BIO11) are highly correlated between models. Precipitation variables (BIO12-BIO19) show no correlation between models, and specifically, BIO14 (precipitation of the driest month) and BIO15 (Precipitation Seasonality (Coefficient of Variation)) show the highest level of discrepancy between GCMs. Following our results, we strongly recommend the use of different GCMs for constructing or projecting ENMs, particularly when predicting the distribution of species that inhabit the tropics and the temperate areas of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, because climatic predictions for those areas vary greatly among GCMs. We also recommend the exclusion of BIO14 and BIO15 from ENMs because those variables show a high level of discrepancy between GCMs. Thus, by excluding them, we decrease the level of uncertainty of our predictions. All the climatic layers produced for this paper are freely available in http://ecoclimate.org/.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Climate*
  • Cluster Analysis
  • Ecosystem
  • Models, Theoretical*
  • Temperature

Grants and funding

This paper was made possible by funding from the Education for Competitiveness Operational Programme (ECOP) project ‘Support of establishment, development and mobility of quality research teams at the Charles University’ (CZ.1.07/2.3.00/30.0022). SV is funded by the European Science Foundation and Czech Republic. Research projects of LCT and MSLR are supported by CNPq (processes 563727/2010-1 and 473811/2013-8) and FAPEG (2012/1026.700.1086). LCT is supported by a CNPq researcher fellowship. MSLR thanks FAPEG for financial support to his research in paleobiology (process number 2012-1026.700.1086).