Berlin 2012 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 28: Data Analysis Methods and Modelling of Geophysical Systems
DY 28.1: Vortrag
Donnerstag, 29. März 2012, 15:00–15:15, MA 144
Nonlinear detection of paleoclimate-variability transitions possibly related to human evolution — •Jonathan F. Donges1,2, Reik V. Donner1, Martin H. Trauth3, Norbert Marwan1, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber1, and Jürgen Kurths1,2 — 1Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany — 2Department of Physics, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany — 3Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
Potential paleoclimatic driving mechanisms acting on human evolution present an open problem of cross-disciplinary scientific interest. The analysis of paleoclimate archives encoding the environmental variability in East Africa during the last 5 Ma (million years) has triggered an ongoing debate about possible candidate processes and evolutionary mechanisms. In this work, we apply a novel nonlinear statistical technique, recurrence network analysis, to three distinct marine records of terrigenous dust flux. Our method enables us to identify three epochs with transitions between qualitatively different types of environmental variability in North and East Africa. A reexamination of the available fossil record demonstrates statistically significant coincidences between the detected transition periods and major steps in hominin evolution. This suggests that the observed shifts between more regular and more erratic environmental variability may have acted as a trigger for rapid change in the development of humankind in Africa.