Fig. 4: Late Paleozoic climate variability in temperature and precipitation (360–250 Ma).
From: Tectonic–astronomical interactions in shaping late Paleozoic climate and organic carbon burial
The temporal evolution of global mean surface temperature (GMST, °C) and global mean precipitation (GMP, mm/month) variability during the late Paleozoic (360–250 Ma) is derived from a suite of fully coupled Community Earth System Model (CESM) simulations conducted at 10-million-year intervals across 12 time slices. The red shaded area with box plots represents monthly variability in global mean surface temperature, while the blue shaded area with box plots corresponds to monthly variability in global mean precipitation. The dashed lines denote the mean values for each period, and the boxes indicate the interquartile range (25–75%). Six additional inset maps show zonal surface temperature differences and zonal precipitation differences for the time points 340 Ma, 290 Ma, and 250 Ma. CESM-simulated SST (sea surface temperature) averaged over paleolatitudes of ±5° and ±30° define the upper and lower bounds of the shaded band (dark blue), representing tropical SST variability across time. Conodont-based SST reconstructions (black crosses) are compiled from equatorial regions corresponding to paleolatitudes within the tropical belt, and the probability density distribution is visualized as a light blue background. The modeled SST consistently align with the empirical range, supporting the validity of CESM temperature outputs94. At the base, atmospheric pCO2 estimates and LOWESS trendline as in Fig. 1b.
