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Published Online September 30, 2004
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1096109

Reports

Submitted on January 27, 2004
Accepted on August 23, 2004

Reconstructing Past Climate from Noisy Data

Hans von Storch 1*, Eduardo Zorita 1, Julie Jones 1, Yegor Dimitriev 1, Fidel González-Rouco 2, Simon Tett 3

1 Institute for Coastal Research, GKSS Research Centre, Geesthacht Germany.
2 Department of Astrophysics and Atmospheric Physics, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain.
3 UK Meteorological Office, Hadley Centre (Reading Unit), Meteorology Building, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6BB.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Hans von Storch , E-mail: storch{at}gkss.de

Empirical reconstructions of the Northern Hemisphere (NH) temperature in the last millennium based on multy proxy records depict small-amplitude variations followed by a clear warming trend in the last two centuries. We use a coupled atmosphere-ocean model simulation of the last 1000 years as a surrogate climate to test the skill of these methods, particularly at multidecadal and centennial timescales. Idealized proxy records are represented by simulated grid-point temperature, degraded with statistical noise. The centennial variability of the NH temperature is underestimated by the regression-based methods applied here, suggesting that past variations may have been at least a factor of two larger than indicated by empirical reconstructions.


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)