Climate of the Past Discussions www.clim-past-discuss.net 1814-9340 1814-9359 5 5 2009 10.5194/cpd-5-2115-2009 http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/5/2115/2009/ http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/5/2115/2009/cpd-5-2115-2009.html http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/5/2115/2009/cpd-5-2115-2009.pdf 2115 2156 2009-09-07 Using data assimilation to study extratropical Northern Hemisphere climate over the last millennium M. Widmann m.widmann@bham.ac.uk H. Goosse G. van der Schrier R. Schnur J. Barkmeijer Institute for Coastal Research, GKSS Research Centre, Geesthacht, Germany School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Science, University of Birmingham, UK Institut d'Astronomie et de Géophysique George Lemâitre, Université catholique de Louvain, France Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), De Bilt, The Netherlands O.A.SYS – Ocean Atmosphere Systems GmbH, Hamburg, Germany Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), De Bilt, The Netherlands Climate proxy data provide noisy, and spatially incomplete information on some aspects of past climate states, whereas palaeosimulations with climate models provide global, multi-variable states, which may however differ from the true states due to unpredictable internal variability not related to climate forcings, as well as due to model deficiencies. Using data assimilation for combining the empirical information from proxy data with the physical understanding of the climate system represented by the equations in a climate model is in principle a promising way to obtain better estimates for the climate of the past. <br></br> Data assimilation has been used for a long time in weather forecasting and atmospheric analyses to control the states in atmospheric General Circulation Models such that they are in agreement with observation from surface, upper air, and satellite measurements. Here we discuss the similarities and the differences between the data assimilation problem in palaeoclimatology and in weather forecasting, and present and conceptually compare three data assimilation methods that have been developed in recent years for applications in palaeoclimatology. 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