DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/cr01753
copiedProxy record selection to refine Holocene temperature reconstruction in Europe
Holocene climate reconstructions are characterized by rather smooth temperature trends owing to the low temporal resolution, dating uncertainty, and non-climatic noise of underlying proxy records. In this study, we apply methods to refine such reconstructions in Europe by calibrating a network of 126 low-resolution Holocene proxies against a continental-scale (smoothed) high-resolution temperature reconstruction over the past 2000 yr. This approach differentiates between 35 records that correlate with the shorter continental reconstruction, and 91 records that do not correlate or have other issues such as abrupt variance, temperature level, or temporal resolution changes. The separation into ‘calibrating’ and ‘non-calibrating’ proxies has limited statistical skill, however. This is because the smoothed record autocorrelations exceed r = 0.99 and constrain the degrees of freedom of any correlation-based analysis. The selection based on fit with a common target naturally increases covariance among the records, from an inter-series correlation (Rbar) of 0.00 for all 126 proxies, to Rbar = 0.33 for the 35 calibrating proxies over the Common Era (CE). Covariance in the latter group also reached Rbar = 0.30 during the period Before the Common Era (BCE), compared to Rbar = 0.04 among the non-calibrating proxies. This increase in covariance prior to the CE, while not statistically significant, indicates that the selection process based on fit with a much shorter, 2000 yr target may have improved the temperature reconstruction over the Holocene.
KEYWORDS
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Jan Esper (Corresponding Author)
- Department of Geography, Johannes Gutenberg University, 55099 Mainz, Germany
Edurne Martinez del Castillo (Co-author)
- Department of Geography, Johannes Gutenberg University, 55099 Mainz, Germany
Manuel Chevalier (Co-author)
- Institute of Geosciences, University of Bonn, 53121 Bonn, Germany
Tito Arosio (Co-author)
- Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, CB2 3EN Cambridge, United Kingdom
- Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, CB2 3EN Cambridge, UK
Ulf Büntgen (Co-author)
- Global Change Research Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno 603 00, Czech Republic
Handling Editor:
Nils Christian, Stenseth, Oslo, Norway
Reviewers:
2 anonymous referees
Acknowledgements:
This study was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) advanced grant MONOSTAR (AdG 882727), ERC synergy grant Synergy-Plague (#101118880), the Czech Science Foundation grant HYDRO8 (23-08049 S), European Union (EU) project AdAgriF (CZ.02.01.01/00/22_008/0004635), and Bundesministerium für Bildung, Forschung, Technologie und Raumfahrt (BMBF) project PalMod III (01LP2308B).