Diverse manifestations of the impact of astronomical forcing and CO2 on climate and vegetation changes during MIS-11 and MIS-13

Numerous studies have been made on paleoclimate and paleovegetation reconstructions and simulations of the past interglacials. However, systematical analysis of the global patterns of the correlation between vegetation pattern and astronomical forcing as well as CO₂ between different interglacials is rare. Given the distinct differences in orbital configurations and climate/vegetation variations between MIS-11 and MIS-13, we performed two sets of transient simulations using LOVECLIM 1.3, one driven by insolation change only, and another one by changes in both insolation and CO₂. These simulations allow us to investigate the relative effect of astronomical forcing and CO₂ on global and regional vegetation changes during these two interglacials. Our results show that the effects of precession and obliquity on vegetation depend strongly on regions, and the simulated results are in good agreement with vegetation reconstructions at key regions. The vegetation response differs widely between MIS-11and MIS-13, which is mainly caused by the difference in their astronomical configurations, and the difference in CO₂ concentration between these two interglacials plays a minor role. In addition to the effect of precession and obliquity, our simulations are also able to capture the half precession signal (~ 10 ka) in the climate and vegetation changes in the tropical regions in response to the tropical insolation.