Across the glacial-interglacial cycles of the late Pleistocene (~700 k.y.), temperature variability at low latitudes is often considered to have been negligible compared to changes in precipitation. However, a paucity of quantified temperature records makes this difficult to reliably assess. In this study, we used the Bayesian method CREST (Climate REconstruction SofTware) to produce a 790,000 yr quantified temperature reconstruction from a marine pollen record from southeast Africa. The results reveal a strong similarity between temperature variability in subtropical Africa and global ice volume and CO2 concentrations, indicating that temperature in the region was not controlled by local insolation, but followed global trends at these time scales, with an amplitude of ~4 °C between glacial minima and interglacial maxima. The data also enabled us to make an assessment of the impact of temperature change on pollen diversity, with results showing there is no link between glacial-age temperatures/CO2 and a loss of diversity in this record.

中文翻译：

---

过去790,000年间非洲东南部亚热带的温度变化

在晚更新世（~700 ky）的冰期-间冰期循环中，与降水变化相比，低纬度地区的温度变化通常被认为可以忽略不计。然而，由于缺乏量化的温度记录，因此难以可靠地评估。在这项研究中，我们使用贝叶斯方法 CREST（气候重建软件）从非洲东南部的海洋花粉记录中生成了 790,000 年的量化温度重建。结果表明，亚热带非洲的温度变化与全球冰量和 CO2 浓度之间存在很强的相似性，表明该地区的温度不受局部日照的控制，而是遵循这些时间尺度的全球趋势，幅度约为 4 °C介于冰期最小值和间冰期最大值之间。