Identification

Title

The importance of the geophysical context in statistical evaluations of climate reconstruction procedures

Abstract

A portion of the debate about climate reconstructions of the past millennium, and in particular about the well-known Mann-Bradley-Hughes ("MBH" 1998, 1999) reconstructions, has become disconnected from the goal of understanding natural climate variability. Here, we reflect on what can be learned from recent scientific exchanges and identify important challenges that remain to be addressed openly and productively by the community. One challenge arises from the real, underlying trend in temperatures during the instrumental period. This trend can affect regression-based reconstruction performance in cases where the calibration period does not appropriately cover the range of conditions encountered during the reconstruction. However, because it is tied to a unique spatial pattern driven by change in radiative balance, the trend cannot simply be removed in the method of climate field reconstruction used by MBH on the statistical argument of preserving degrees of freedom. More appropriately, the influence from the trend can be taken into account in some methods of significance testing. We illustrate these considerations as they apply to the MBH reconstruction and show that it remains robust back to AD 1450, and given other empirical information also back to AD 1000. However, there is now a need to move beyond hemispheric average temperatures and to focus instead on resolving climate variability at the socially more relevant regional scale.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7dv1k4p

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2007-11-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact