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Originally published in Science Express on 30 September 2004
Science 22 October 2004:
Vol. 306. no. 5696, pp. 679 - 682
DOI: 10.1126/science.1096109
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Reports

Reconstructing Past Climate from Noisy Data

Hans von Storch,1* Eduardo Zorita,1 Julie M. Jones,1 Yegor Dimitriev,1 Fidel González-Rouco,2 Simon F. B. Tett3

Empirical reconstructions of the Northern Hemisphere (NH) temperature in the past millennium based on multiproxy records depict small-amplitude variations followed by a clear warming trend in the past two centuries. We use a coupled atmosphere-ocean model simulation of the past 1000 years as a surrogate climate to test the skill of these methods, particularly at multidecadal and centennial time scales. 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 2 larger than indicated by empirical reconstructions.

1 Institute for Coastal Research, GKSS Research Centre, Geesthacht 21502, Germany.
2 Department of Astrophysics and Atmospheric Physics, Universidad Complutense, Madrid 28040, Spain.
3 UK Meteorological Office, Hadley Centre (Reading Unit), Meteorology Building, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6BB, UK.

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

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