Climate of the Past Discussions www.clim-past-discuss.net 1814-9340 1814-9359 5 6 2009 10.5194/cpd-5-2631-2009 http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/5/2631/2009/ http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/5/2631/2009/cpd-5-2631-2009.html http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/5/2631/2009/cpd-5-2631-2009.pdf 2631 2668 2009-12-23 Refining error estimates for a millennial temperature reconstruction M. N. Juckes martin.juckes@stfc.ac.uk STFC, Rutherford Appleton Lab, Chilton, Didcot, OX11 0QX, UK The statistical uncertainties in a 1000 year Northern Hemisphere mean temperature reconstruction obtained from 15 proxy chronologies are examined in detail by analysing the range of estimates obtained from all possible subsets of the proxy collection with up to 6 proxies omitted. The study is motivated in part by the large range of recently published reconstructions in the 15th and 16th centuries. The uncertainty estimates support the conclusions of the 3rd and 4th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports concerning the likelihood that temperatures at the end of the 20th century were likely (greater than 66% confidence) to have been exceptional. It is also shown that the last ten years to date have been warmer than any decade of the past millennium with 95% confidence. Anchukaitis, K., Evans, M., Kaplan, A., Vaganov, E., Hughes, M., Grissino-Mayer, H., and Cane, M.: Forward modeling of regional-scale tree-ring patterns in the southeastern United States and the recent emergence of summer drought stress, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33(4), L04705, doi:10.1029/2005GL025050, 2006. Anderson, D M., Overpeck, J T., and Gupta, A K.: Increase in the Asian southwest monsoon during the past four centuries, Science, 297, 596–599, 2002. Briffa, K R., Bartholin, T S., Eckstein, D., Jones, P D., Karlen, W., Schweingruber, F H., and Zetterberg, P.: 1,400-year tree-ring record of summer temperatures in Fennoscandia, Nature, 346, 434–439, doi:10.1038/346434a0, 1990. Briffa, K R., Jones, P D., Schweingruber, F H., Shiyatov, S G., and Cook, E R.: Unusual twentieth-century summer warmth in a 1,000-year temperature record from Siberia, Nature, 376, 156–159, 1995. Brohan, P., Kennedy, J J., Harris, I., Tett, S. F B., and Jones, P D.: Uncertainty estimates in regional and global observed temperature changes: A new data set from 1850, J. Geophys. Res., 111, D12106, doi:10.1029/2005JD006548, 2006. Bürger, G., Fast, I., and Cubasch, U.: Climate reconstruction by regression – 32 variations on a theme, Tellus A, 58(2), 227–235, 2006. Chbouki, N.: Spatio-temporal characteristics of drought as inferred from tree-ring data in Morocco, Ph.D. thesis, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, 1992. Christiansen, B., Schmith, T., and Thejll, P.: A Surrogate Ensemble Study of Climate Reconstruction Methods: Stochasticity and Robustness, J. Climate, 22, 951–976, doi:10.1175/2008JCLI2301.1, 2009. Cronin, T M., Dwyer, G S., Kamiya, T., Schwede, S., and Willard, D A.: Medieval Warm Period, Global Planet. Change, 36, 17–29, 2003. Dahl-Jensen, D., Mosegaard, K., Gundestrup, N., Clow, G D., Johnsen, S J., Hansen, A W., and Balling, N.: Past temperatures directly from the Greenland Ice Sheet, Science, 282, 268–271, 1998. D'Arrigo, R., Jacoby, G., Frank, D., Pederson, N., Cook, E., Buckley, B., Nachin, B., Mijiddorj, R., and Dugarjav, C.: 1738 Years of Mongolian temperature variability inferred from a tree-ring width chronology of Siberian pine, Geophys. Res. Lett., 28, 543–546, 2001. Esper, J., Cook, E R., and Schweingruber, F H.: Low-frequency signals in long tree-ring chronologies for reconstructing past temperature variability, Science, 295, 2250–2253, 2002. Fisher, D A., Koerner, R M., Kuivinen, K., Clausen, H B., Johnsen, S J., Steffensen, J P., Gundestrup, N., and Hammer, C U.: Inter-comparison of ice core and precipitation records from sites in Canada and Greenland over the last 3500 years and over the last few centuries in detail using EOF techniques, NATO ASI Ser, Ser. I, vol. 41, edited by: Jones, P. D., Bradley, R. S., and Jouzel, J., Springer-Verlag, New York, 297–328, 1996. Folland, C K., Karl, T R., Christy, J R., Clarke, R A., Gruza, G V., Jouzel, J., Mann, M E., Oerlemans, J., Salinger, M J., and Wang, S W.: Observed Climate Variability and Change, in: Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, edited by: Houghton J. T., et al., Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 99–181, 2001. Ge, Q., Zheng, J., Fang, X., Man, Z., Zhang, X., Zhang, P., and Wang, W.-C.: Winter half-year temperature reconstruction for the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and Yangtze River, China, during the past 2000 years, The Holocene, 13(6), 933–940, 2003. Gupta, A K., Anderson, D M., and Overpeck, J T.: Abrupt changes in the Asian southwest monsoon during the Holocene and their links to the North Atlantic Ocean, Nature, 421, 354–357, 2003. Jansen, E., Overpeck, J., Briffa, K., Duplessy, J.-C., Joos, F., Masson-Delmotte, V., Olago, D., Otto-Bliesner, B., Peltier, W., Rahmstorf, S., Ramesh, R., Raynaud, D., Rind, D., Solomina, O., Villalba, R., and Zhang, D.: Palaeoclimate, in: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by: Solomon, S., Qin, D., Manning, M., Chen, Z., Marquis, M., Averyt, K., Tignor, M., and Miller, H., chap 6, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA, 2007. Jones, P D. and Moberg, A.: Hemispheric and large-scale surface air temperature variations: An extensive revision and an update to 2001, J. Clim., 16, 206–223, 2003. Jones, P D., Briffa, K R., Osborn, T J., Lough, J M., van Ommen, T D., Vinther, B M., Lutherbacher, J., Wahl, E R., Zwiers, F W., Mann, M E., Schmidt, G A., Ammann, C M., Buckley, B M., Cobb, K M., Esper, J., Goosse, H., Graham, N., Jansen, E., Kiefer, T., Kull, C., Kuettel, M., Mosley-Thompson, E., Overpeck, J T., Riedwyl, N., Schulz, M., Tudhope, A W., Villalba, R., Wanner, H., Wolff, E., and Xoplaki, E.: High-resolution palaeoclimatology of the last millennium: a review of current status and future prospects, Holocene, 19, 3–49, doi:10.1177/0959683608098952, 2009. Juckes, M. N., Allen, M. R., Briffa, K. R., Esper, J., Hegerl, G. C., Moberg, A., Osborn, T. J., and Weber, S. L.: Millennial temperature reconstruction intercomparison and evaluation, Clim. Past, 3, 591–609, 2007. Lee, T. C K., Zwiers, F W., and Tsao, M.: Evaluation of proxy-based millennial reconstruction methods, Clim. Dynam., 31, 263–281, doi:10.1007/s00382-007-0351-9, 2008. Ljungqvist, F C.: Temperature proxy records covering the last two millennia: a tabular and visual overview, Geogr. Ann. A., 91A, 11–29, 2009. Lloyd, A H. and Graumlich, L J.: Holocene dynamics of treeline forests in the Sierra Nevada, Ecology, 78, 1199–1210, 1997. Mann, M., Zhang, Z., Hughes, M., Bradley, R., Miller, S., Rutherford, S., and Ni, F.: Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia, P. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 105, 13252–13257, doi:10.1073/pnas.0805721105, 2008. Moberg, A., Sonechkin, D M., Holmgren, K., Datsenko, N M., and Karlén, W.: Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-reslution proxy data, Nature, 433, 613–617, 2005. Moore, J., Hughen, K., Miller, G., and Overpeck, J.: Little Ice Age Recorded in Summer Temperatures from Varved Sediments of Donard Lake, Baffin Island, Canada, J. Paleolimnol., 25, 503–517, 2001. Naurzbaev, M M. and Vaganov, E A.: 1957-year tree-ring chronology of eastern part of Taymir, Siberian Journal of Ecology, 6, 159–168, 1999. Naurzbaev, M M., Vaganov, E A., Sidorova, O V., and Schweingruber, F H.: Summer temperatures in eastern Taimyr inferred from a 2427-year late-Holocene tree-ring chronology and earlier floating series, The Holocene, 12, 727–737, 2002. Shao, J. and Tu, D.: The Jackknife and Bootstrap, Springer Verlag, New York, NY, USA, 540~pp., 1995. Tan, M., Liu, T., Hou, J., Qin, X., Zhang, H., and Tieying, L.: Cyclic rapid warming on centennial-scale revealed by a 2650-year stalagmite record of warm season temperature, Geophys. Res. Lett., 30, 1617, doi:10.1029/2003GL017 352, 2003. Thompson, L G.: Ice core evidence from Peru and China, in Climate Since A.D. 1500, edited by: Bradley, R. S. and Jones, P. D., New York, 517–548, 1992. von Storch, H., Zorita, E., and Gonzalez-Rouco, F.: Assessment of three temperature reconstruction methods in the virtual reality of a climate simulation, Int. J. Earth Sci., 98, 67–82, doi:10.1007/s00531-008-0349-5, 2009. Weber, S. L.: A timescale analysis of the Northern Hemisphere temperature response to volcanic and solar forcing, Clim. Past, 1, 9–17, 2005. Wilson, R., Tudhope, A., Brohan, P., Briffa, K., Osborn, T., and Tett, S.: Two-hundred-fifty years of reconstructed and modeled tropical temperatures, J. Geophys. Res., 111, C10007, doi:10.1029/2005JC003188, 2006. Wilson, R., D'Arrigo, R., Buckley, B., Büntgen, U., Esper, J., Frank, D., Luckman, B., Payette, S., Vose, R., , and Youngblut, D.: A matter of divergence: Tracking recent warming at hemispheric scales using tree ring data, J. Geophys. Res., 112, D17103, doi:10.1029/2006JD008318, 2007. Yang, B., Bräuning, A., Johnson, K R., and Yafeng, S.: General characteristics of temperature variation in China during the last two millennia, Geophys. Res. Lett, 29(9), 1324, doi:10.1029/2001GL014 485, 2002.