Simon Brewer

TL;DR: European trees and shrubs studied had genetically divergent populations in Mediterranean regions, but the genetically most diverse populations were not located in the south but at intermediate latitudes, a likely consequence of the admixture of divergent lineages colonizing the continent from separate refugia.

Abstract: We used a database capturing large wildfires (> 405 ha) in the western U.S. to document regional trends in fire occurrence, total fire area, fire size, and day of year of ignition for 1984–2011. Over the western U.S. and in a majority of ecoregions, we found significant, increasing trends in the number of large fires and/or total large fire area per year. Trends were most significant for southern and mountain ecoregions, coinciding with trends toward increased drought severity. For all ecoregions combined, the number of large fires increased at a rate of seven fires per year, while total fire area increased at a rate of 355 km2 per year. Continuing changes in climate, invasive species, and consequences of past fire management, added to the impacts of larger, more frequent fires, will drive further disruptions to fire regimes of the western U.S. and other fire-prone regions of the world.

TL;DR: In this paper, the first area-average time series reconstructions of warmest month, coldest month and mean annual surface air temperatures across Europe during the last 12,000 years are presented.

TL;DR: Drawing conclusions on the location of glacial period refugia and the colonisation routes derived from molecular information and fossil pollen data appear to be both largely compatible and complementary.

TL;DR: In this article, the mid-Holocene (MH, around 6 ka) and the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, around 21 ka) were compared with palaeoclimate simulations currently being carried out as part of the fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.