One hundred years of climate change in Mexico
Por:
Cuervo-Robayo, Angela P., URETA, CAROLINA, Gomez-Albores, Miguel A., Meneses-Mosquera, Anny K., Tellez-Valdes, Oswaldo, Martinez-Meyer, Enrique
Publicada:
16 jul 2020
Categoría:
Multidisciplinary
Resumen:
Spatial assessments of historical climate change provide information
that can be used by scientists to analyze climate variation over time
and evaluate, for example, its effects on biodiversity, in order to
focus their research and conservation efforts. Despite the fact that
there are global climatic databases available at high spatial
resolution, they represent a short temporal window that impedes
evaluating historical changes of climate and their impacts on
biodiversity. To fill this gap, we developed climate gridded surfaces
for Mexico for three periods that cover most of the 20(th)and early
21(st)centuries:t(1)-1940 (1910-1949),t(2)-1970 (1950-1979) andt(3)-2000
(1980-2009), and used these interpolated surfaces to describe how
climate has changed over time, both countrywide and in its 19
biogeographic provinces. Results from our characterization of climate
change indicate that the mean annual temperature has increased by nearly
0.2 degrees C on average across the whole country fromt(2)-1970
tot(3)-2000. However, changes have not been spatially uniform: Nearctic
provinces in the north have suffered higher temperature increases than
southern tropical regions. Central and southern provinces cooled at the
beginning of the 20(th)century but warmed consistently since the 1970s.
Precipitation increased betweent(1)-1940 andt(2)-1970 across the
country, more notably in the northern provinces, and it decreased
betweent(2)-1970 andt(3)-2000 in most of the country. Results on the
historical climate conditions in Mexico may be useful for climate change
analyses for both environmental and social sciences. Nonetheless, our
climatology was based on information from climate stations for which
9.4-36.2% presented inhomogeneities over time probably owing to
non-climatic factors, and climate station density changed over time.
Therefore, the estimated changes observed in our analysis need to be
interpreted cautiously.
Filiaciones:
Univ Nacl Autonoma Mexico, Dept Zool, Inst Biol, Mexico City, DF, Mexico
Comis Nacl Conocimiento & Uso Biodiversidad CONAB, Mexico City, DF, Mexico
Univ Nacl Autonoma Mexico, Catedras Dept Ciencias Atmosfer, Ctr Ciencias Atmosfera, Mexico City, DF, Mexico
Univ Autonoma Estado Mexico, Inst Interamer Tecnol & Ciencias Agua, Toluca, Estado De Mexic, Mexico
Univ Nacl Autonoma Mexico, Fac Estudios Super Iztacala, Unidad Biotecnol & Prototipos, Lab Recursos Nat, Tlalnepantla, Mexico
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