Paleoclimate data synthesis and analysis of associated uncertainty (BG/CP/ESSD inter-journal SI)(BG/CP/ESSD inter-journal SI)
Paleoclimate data synthesis and analysis of associated uncertainty (BG/CP/ESSD inter-journal SI)(BG/CP/ESSD inter-journal SI)
Editor(s): M. Kienast, U. Herzschuh, and L. Jonkers Special issue jointly organized between Biogeosciences, Climate of the Past, and Earth System Science Data
Paleoclimate data provide unique insights into climate dynamics across a range of timescales. Importantly, paleoclimate data are the only means of evaluating and constraining climate models under boundary conditions different from today and the recent past. However, most paleoclimate data are presently archived in a fragmented and non-standardized way, necessitating synthesis efforts in order to allow meaningful analysis of spatio-temporal climate dynamics and data-model comparison. Moreover, paleoclimate data are inherently uncertain since they are based on indirect evidence (proxies) and associated with chronological error, requiring rigorous uncertainty analysis to separate signal from noise and to make full use of paleoclimate data syntheses.

This special issue provides a platform to present paleoclimate synthesis products, to review the current state of proxy uncertainty analysis, as well as to present new developments. The issue is organized within the paleoclimate data synthesis working group of the PALMOD (http://www.palmod.de/ ) project, which focuses on the past 130,000 years. However, this is an open submission issue and we explicitly invite contributions from across the paleoclimate community describing synthesis methods and results from any kind of archive and/or parameter. We welcome contributions presenting paleoclimate synthesis products and their analysis across timescales, with regional or global focus and both time slice and transient approaches as well as conceptual contributions to proxy data uncertainty analysis (theoretical, empirical, Bayesian).

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16 Dec 2021
Preface: Advances in paleoclimate data synthesis and analysis of associated uncertainty: towards data–model integration to understand the climate
Lukas Jonkers, Oliver Bothe, and Michal Kucera
Clim. Past, 17, 2577–2581, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-2577-2021,https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-2577-2021, 2021
Paleoclimate data synthesis
19 Dec 2019
Technical note: PaleoDataView – a software toolbox for the collection, homogenization and visualization of marine proxy data
Michael Langner and Stefan Mulitza
Clim. Past, 15, 2067–2072, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-2067-2019,https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-2067-2019, 2019
Short summary
25 Sep 2020
VARDA (VARved sediments DAtabase) – providing and connecting proxy data from annually laminated lake sediments
Arne Ramisch, Alexander Brauser, Mario Dorn, Cecile Blanchet, Brian Brademann, Matthias Köppl, Jens Mingram, Ina Neugebauer, Norbert Nowaczyk, Florian Ott, Sylvia Pinkerneil, Birgit Plessen, Markus J. Schwab, Rik Tjallingii, and Achim Brauer
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 2311–2332, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2311-2020,https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2311-2020, 2020
Short summary
11 May 2020
Integrating palaeoclimate time series with rich metadata for uncertainty modelling: strategy and documentation of the PalMod 130k marine palaeoclimate data synthesis
Lukas Jonkers, Olivier Cartapanis, Michael Langner, Nick McKay, Stefan Mulitza, Anne Strack, and Michal Kucera
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 1053–1081, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-1053-2020,https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-1053-2020, 2020
23 Sep 2020
The Iso2k database: a global compilation of paleo-δ18O and δ2H records to aid understanding of Common Era climate
Bronwen L. Konecky, Nicholas P. McKay, Olga V. Churakova (Sidorova), Laia Comas-Bru, Emilie P. Dassié, Kristine L. DeLong, Georgina M. Falster, Matt J. Fischer, Matthew D. Jones, Lukas Jonkers, Darrell S. Kaufman, Guillaume Leduc, Shreyas R. Managave, Belen Martrat, Thomas Opel, Anais J. Orsi, Judson W. Partin, Hussein R. Sayani, Elizabeth K. Thomas, Diane M. Thompson, Jonathan J. Tyler, Nerilie J. Abram, Alyssa R. Atwood, Olivier Cartapanis, Jessica L. Conroy, Mark A. Curran, Sylvia G. Dee, Michael Deininger, Dmitry V. Divine, Zoltán Kern, Trevor J. Porter, Samantha L. Stevenson, and Lucien von Gunten
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 2261–2288, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2261-2020,https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2261-2020, 2020
22 Jan 2020
A taxonomically harmonized and temporally standardized fossil pollen dataset from Siberia covering the last 40 kyr
Xianyong Cao, Fang Tian, Andrei Andreev, Patricia M. Anderson, Anatoly V. Lozhkin, Elena Bezrukova, Jian Ni, Natalia Rudaya, Astrid Stobbe, Mareike Wieczorek, and Ulrike Herzschuh
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 119–135, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-119-2020,https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-119-2020, 2020
Short summary
20 Jun 2017
A 156 kyr smoothed history of the atmospheric greenhouse gases CO2, CH4, and N2O and their radiative forcing
Peter Köhler, Christoph Nehrbass-Ahles, Jochen Schmitt, Thomas F. Stocker, and Hubertus Fischer
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 9, 363–387, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-9-363-2017,https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-9-363-2017, 2017
Short summary
08 Aug 2019
Pollen-based quantitative land-cover reconstruction for northern Asia covering the last 40 ka cal BP
Xianyong Cao, Fang Tian, Furong Li, Marie-José Gaillard, Natalia Rudaya, Qinghai Xu, and Ulrike Herzschuh
Clim. Past, 15, 1503–1536, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-1503-2019,https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-1503-2019, 2019
Short summary
08 Apr 2021
A global climatology of the ocean surface during the Last Glacial Maximum mapped on a regular grid (GLOMAP)
André Paul, Stefan Mulitza, Rüdiger Stein, and Martin Werner
Clim. Past, 17, 805–824, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-805-2021,https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-805-2021, 2021
Short summary
16 Aug 2018
Deglacial carbon cycle changes observed in a compilation of 127 benthic δ13C time series (20–6 ka)
Carlye D. Peterson and Lorraine E. Lisiecki
Clim. Past, 14, 1229–1252, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-14-1229-2018,https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-14-1229-2018, 2018
Short summary
16 Nov 2020
Aridity synthesis for eight selected key regions of the global climate system during the last 60 000 years
Florian Fuhrmann, Benedikt Diensberg, Xun Gong, Gerrit Lohmann, and Frank Sirocko
Clim. Past, 16, 2221–2238, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-2221-2020,https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-2221-2020, 2020
Short summary
Paleoclimate uncertainty
26 Mar 2019
Empirical estimate of the signal content of Holocene temperature proxy records
Maria Reschke, Kira Rehfeld, and Thomas Laepple
Clim. Past, 15, 521–537, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-521-2019,https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-521-2019, 2019
Short summary
20 Dec 2018
| Highlight paper
What climate signal is contained in decadal- to centennial-scale isotope variations from Antarctic ice cores?
Thomas Münch and Thomas Laepple
Clim. Past, 14, 2053–2070, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-14-2053-2018,https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-14-2053-2018, 2018
Short summary
11 Aug 2020
A spectral approach to estimating the timescale-dependent uncertainty of paleoclimate records – Part 1: Theoretical concept
Torben Kunz, Andrew M. Dolman, and Thomas Laepple
Clim. Past, 16, 1469–1492, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-1469-2020,https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-1469-2020, 2020
Short summary
08 Apr 2021
A spectral approach to estimating the timescale-dependent uncertainty of paleoclimate records – Part 2: Application and interpretation
Andrew M. Dolman, Torben Kunz, Jeroen Groeneveld, and Thomas Laepple
Clim. Past, 17, 825–841, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-825-2021,https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-825-2021, 2021
Short summary
15 May 2019
Sensitivity to species selection indicates the effect of nuisance variables on marine microfossil transfer functions
Lukas Jonkers and Michal Kučera
Clim. Past, 15, 881–891, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-881-2019,https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-881-2019, 2019
Short summary
17 Feb 2020
How large are temporal representativeness errors in paleoclimatology?
Daniel E. Amrhein
Clim. Past, 16, 325–340, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-325-2020,https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-325-2020, 2020
Short summary
Proxy modelling
30 Nov 2018
Sedproxy: a forward model for sediment-archived climate proxies
Andrew M. Dolman and Thomas Laepple
Clim. Past, 14, 1851–1868, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-14-1851-2018,https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-14-1851-2018, 2018
Short summary
01 Aug 2019
Simple noise estimates and pseudoproxies for the last 21 000 years
Oliver Bothe, Sebastian Wagner, and Eduardo Zorita
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 11, 1129–1152, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-11-1129-2019,https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-11-1129-2019, 2019
Short summary
14 Nov 2019
Water isotopes – climate relationships for the mid-Holocene and preindustrial period simulated with an isotope-enabled version of MPI-ESM
Alexandre Cauquoin, Martin Werner, and Gerrit Lohmann
Clim. Past, 15, 1913–1937, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-1913-2019,https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-1913-2019, 2019
Short summary
11 Aug 2021
Applying an isotope-enabled regional climate model over the Greenland ice sheet: effect of spatial resolution on model bias
Marcus Breil, Emanuel Christner, Alexandre Cauquoin, Martin Werner, Melanie Karremann, and Gerd Schädler
Clim. Past, 17, 1685–1699, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-1685-2021,https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-1685-2021, 2021
Short summary
Paleodata assimilation
24 Sep 2018
Towards high-resolution climate reconstruction using an off-line data assimilation and COSMO-CLM 5.00 model
Bijan Fallah, Emmanuele Russo, Walter Acevedo, Achille Mauri, Nico Becker, and Ulrich Cubasch
Clim. Past, 14, 1345–1360, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-14-1345-2018,https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-14-1345-2018, 2018
Short summary
05 Jul 2019
Combining a pollen and macrofossil synthesis with climate simulations for spatial reconstructions of European climate using Bayesian filtering
Nils Weitzel, Andreas Hense, and Christian Ohlwein
Clim. Past, 15, 1275–1301, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-1275-2019,https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-1275-2019, 2019
Short summary
29 Mar 2021
Technical note: Considerations on using uncertain proxies in the analogue method for spatiotemporal reconstructions of millennial-scale climate
Oliver Bothe and Eduardo Zorita
Clim. Past, 17, 721–751, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-721-2021,https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-721-2021, 2021
Short summary
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