Orbital forcing of tree-ring data

Esper, Jan; Frank, David; Timonen, Mauri; Zorita, Eduardo; Wilson, Rob; Luterbacher, Jürg; Holzkämper, Steffen; Fischer, Nils; Wagner, Sebastian; Nievergelt, Daniel; Verstege, Anne; Büntgen, Ulf

doi:10.1038/nclimate1589

Cited by 249 publications

(316 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…4f) show significant long-term negative forcing over the last 2,000 years (Mann-Kendall trend test, P < 0.05). Furthermore, in the Northern Hemisphere mid to high latitudes, the millennial-scale cooling can be ascribed to an orbitally driven decrease in local summer insolation, as suggested for the Arctic 18 and northern Scandinavia 19 . In the Southern Hemisphere, a climate model of intermediate complexity simulates a multi-millennial cooling in summer as a delayed response to the decrease in local spring insolation, modulated by the thermal inertia of the Southern Ocean 20 .…”

Section: Millennial Coolingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia

Ahmed¹,

Anchukaitis²,

Asrat³

et al. 2013

Nature Geosci

957

209

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Past global climate changes had strong regional expression. To elucidate their spatio-temporal pattern, we reconstructed past temperatures for seven continental-scale regions during the past one to two millennia. The most coherent feature in nearly all of the regional temperature reconstructions is a long-term cooling trend, which ended late in the nineteenth century. At multi-decadal to centennial scales, temperature variability shows distinctly different regional patterns, with more similarity within each hemisphere than between them. There were no globally synchronous multi-decadal warm or cold intervals that define a worldwide Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age, but all reconstructions show generally cold conditions between AD 1580 and 1880, punctuated in some regions by warm decades during the eighteenth century. The transition to these colder conditions occurred earlier in the Arctic, Europe and Asia than in North America or the Southern Hemisphere regions. Recent warming reversed the long-term cooling; during the period AD 1971-2000, the area-weighted average reconstructed temperature was higher than any other time in nearly 1,400 years

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Section: Millennial Coolingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia

Ahmed¹,

Anchukaitis²,

Asrat³

et al. 2013

Nature Geosci

957

209

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“…The density of wood in tree rings determined by X-ray densitometry is a much more informative characteristic of past climate compared to the conventional data on tree ring width. In recent times, this technique has been widely accepted, and data on tree ring density of coniferous (predominantly pine and black spruce) and oak trees have been used to reconstruct the summer air temperature over the past millennia (Grudd 2008;Esper et al 2012). Long Holocene chronologies consist of oak and pine tree ring data from the southern part of Germany and cover large portions of the Lateglacial period, extending into the Younger Dryas back to about 12,000 years ago (Friedrich et al 1999), see also Chap.…”

Section: Methodology For Palaeoclimatic Reconstructionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Proxy data reconstructions show that a trend towards cooler and wetter conditions prevailed across Fennoscandia during the past 2000-1500 years (Bjune et al 2009;Esper et al 2012). These climate trends are shown by, for example, δ 18 O records from lake sediments (Hammarlund et al 2003;Rosqvist et al 2007), tree ring-inferred summer temperature and pollen data.…”

Section: Late Holocene Coolingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate Change During the Holocene (Past 12,000 Years)

Борзенкова

Zorita

Borisova

et al. 2015

Regional Climate Studies

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This chapter summarises the climatic and environmental information that can be inferred from proxy archives over the past 12,000 years. The proxy archives from continental and lake sediments include pollen, insect remnants and isotopic data. Over the Holocene, the Baltic Sea area underwent major changes due to two interrelated factors-melting of the Fennoscandian ice sheet (causing interplay between global sea-level rise due to the meltwater and regional isostatic rebound of the earth's crust causing a drop in relative sea level) and changes in the orbital configuration of the Earth (triggering the glacial to interglacial transition and affecting incoming solar radiation and so controlling the regional energy balance). The Holocene climate history showed three stages of natural climate oscillations in the Baltic Sea region: short-term cold episodes related to deglaciation during a stable positive temperature trend (11,000-8000 cal year BP); a warm and stable climate with air temperature 1.0-3.5°C above modern levels (8000-4500 cal year BP), a decreasing temperature trend; and increased climatic instability (last 5000-4500 years). The climatic variation during the Lateglacial and Holocene is reflected in the changing lake levels and vegetation, and in the formation of a complex hydrographical network that set the stage for the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age of the past millennium.

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“…Orbital forcing is associated with changes in insolation that are strongly dependent on the season and latitude 32 , and over the Pleistocene epoch, orbital changes forced global climate through amplification mechanisms at high northern latitudes, including the well-known ice-albedo amplification 33 . High northern latitude temperature trends during the past millennium 27,34,35 have also been attributed to orbital forcing, specifically to declining high northern latitude summer insolation, amplified by feedbacks in the Arctic region and resulting in cooling 34,35 . However, when integrated over the full calendar year and spatially across the globe 32 , the 1-2000 ce change in orbital radiative forcing at the top of the atmosphere is only +4.4 × 10 −3 W m −2 (ref.…”

Section: External Forcing Of the Global Sst Coolingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, when integrated over the full calendar year and spatially across the globe 32 , the 1-2000 ce change in orbital radiative forcing at the top of the atmosphere is only +4.4 × 10 −3 W m −2 (ref. 34). Consequently, the CSIRO Mk3L and LOVECLIM models both give weak and non-significant global ocean SST trends for the orbital forcing simulations, because the global ocean integrates the average global orbital forcing.…”

Section: External Forcing Of the Global Sst Coolingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robust global ocean cooling trend for the pre-industrial Common Era

et al. 2015

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International audienceKnowledge of natural climate variability is essential to better constrain the uncertainties in projections of twenty-first-century climate change 1–5. The past 2,000 years (2 kyr) have emerged as a critical interval in this endeavour, with sufficient length to characterize natural decadal-to-centennial scale change, known external climate forcings 6 and with distinctive patterns of spatiotemporal temperature variations 7. However, reconstructions for the full 2 kyr interval are not available for the global ocean, a primary heat reservoir 8 and an important regulator of global climate on longer timescales 9–11. Here we present a global ocean sea surface temperature (SST) synthesis (Ocean2k SST synthesis) spanning the Common Era, which shows a cooling trend that is similar, within uncertainty, to that simulated by realistically forced climate models for the past millennium. We use the simulations to identify the climate forcing(s) consistent with reconstructed SST variations during the past millennium. The oceans mediate the response of global climate to natural and anthropogenic forcings. Yet for the past 2,000 years — a key interval for understanding the present and future climate response to these forcings — global sea surface temperature changes and the underlying driving mechanisms are poorly constrained. Here we present a global synthesis of sea surface temperatures for the Common Era (ce) derived from 57 individual marine reconstructions that meet strict quality control criteria. We observe a cooling trend from 1 to 1800 ce that is robust against explicit tests for potential biases in the reconstructions. Between 801 and 1800 ce, the surface cooling trend is qualitatively consistent with an independent synthesis of terrestrial temperature reconstructions, and with a sea surface temperature composite derived from an ensemble of climate model simulations using best estimates of past external radiative forcings. Climate simulations using single and cumulative forcings suggest that the ocean surface cooling trend from 801 to 1800 ce is not primarily a response to orbital forcing but arises from a high frequency of explosive volcanism. Our results show that repeated clusters of volcanic eruptions can induce a net negative radiative forcing that results in a centennial and global scale cooling trend via a decline in mixed-layer oceanic heat content

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Orbital forcing of tree-ring data

Cited by 249 publications

References 26 publications

Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia

Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia

Climate Change During the Holocene (Past 12,000 Years)

Robust global ocean cooling trend for the pre-industrial Common Era

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