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Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data

Naturevolume 433, pages613–617 (2005)Cite this article

ACorrigendum to this article was published on 23 February 2006

Abstract

A number of reconstructions of millennial-scale climate variability have been carried out in order to understand patterns of natural climate variability, on decade to century timescales, and the role of anthropogenic forcing1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8. These reconstructions have mainly used tree-ring data and other data sets of annual to decadal resolution. Lake and ocean sediments have a lower time resolution, but provide climate information at multicentennial timescales that may not be captured by tree-ring data9,10. Here we reconstruct Northern Hemisphere temperatures for the past 2,000 years by combining low-resolution proxies with tree-ring data, using a wavelet transform technique11 to achieve timescale-dependent processing of the data. Our reconstruction shows larger multicentennial variability than most previous multi-proxy reconstructions1,2,3,4,7, but agrees well with temperatures reconstructed from borehole measurements12 and with temperatures obtained with a general circulation model13,14. According to our reconstruction, high temperatures—similar to those observed in the twentieth century before 1990—occurred aroundad 1000 to 1100, and minimum temperatures that are about 0.7 K below the average of 1961–90 occurred aroundad 1600. This large natural variability in the past suggests an important role of natural multicentennial variability that is likely to continue.

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Figure 1: Locations of proxy data sites.
Figure 2: Estimations of Northern Hemisphere mean temperature variations.

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Acknowledgements

We thank H. von Storch, E. Zorita and F. González-Rouco for the ECHO-G data, and H. Pollack and J. Smerdon for borehole data. All these persons and J. Esper, J. Luterbacher and M. Rummukainen are thanked for comments on early versions of the manuscript. We acknowledge financial support from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Science Council and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Meteorology, Stockholm University, SE-106 91, Stockholm, Sweden

    Anders Moberg

  2. Dynamical-Stochastical Laboratory, Hydrometeorological Research Centre of Russia, Bolshoy Predtechensky Lane 11/13, 123 242, Moscow, Russia

    Dmitry M. Sonechkin & Nina M. Datsenko

  3. Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, SE-106 91, Stockholm, Sweden

    Karin Holmgren & Wibjörn Karlén

Authors
  1. Anders Moberg

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  2. Dmitry M. Sonechkin

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  3. Karin Holmgren

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  4. Nina M. Datsenko

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  5. Wibjörn Karlén

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Corresponding author

Correspondence toAnders Moberg.

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The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Notes

Details about proxy data series used, with reference list. (DOC 45 kb)

Supplementary Methods

Description of the methods for estimation of the uncertainties in the reconstruction. (DOC 117 kb)

Supplementary Figure 1

Time series plots of low-resolution proxy data series. (PDF 111 kb)

Supplementary Figure 2

Time series plots of tree-ring series. (PDF 91 kb)

Supplementary Figure 3

Time series plot of low-frequency component of the uncalibrated reconstruction, with jack-knifed estimates and associated 95% confidence intervals for the mean. (PDF 161 kb)

Supplementary Data

Data for the NH temperature reconstruction. (DOC 266 kb)

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Moberg, A., Sonechkin, D., Holmgren, K.et al. Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data.Nature433, 613–617 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03265

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Editorial Summary

Palaeoclimate: tracking the trend

A 2,000-year reconstruction of annual temperature for the Northern Hemisphere breaks new ground in the way it combines data from climate proxies with different inherent time scales — such as lake and ocean sediment and tree-ring data — to give full weight to each proxy at its optimum resolution. This technique, using wavelet transformation, makes the most of the available palaeoclimate data. The resulting reconstruction supports the case that multicentennial natural variability has been larger than is commonly thought, and that considerable natural climate variation can be expected in future. High temperatures occurred during the tenth century and notable ‘lows’ around 1600. But post-1990 temperatures stand out still as higher than at any time in the previous 2,000 years.

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