Validation of climate model-inferred regional temperature change for late-glacial Europe

Heiri, Oliver; Brooks, Stephen J.; Renssen, Hans; Bedford, Alan; Hazekamp, Marjolein; Ilyashuk, Boris; Jeffers, Elizabeth S.; Lang, Barbara; Kirilova, Emiliya; Kuiper, Saskia; Millet, Laurent; Samartin, Stéphanie; Toth, Monika; Verbruggen, Frederike; Watson, Jenny E.; van Asch, Nelleke; Lammertsma, Emmy; Amon, Leeli; Birks, Hilary H.; Birks, H. John B; ... (2014). Validation of climate model-inferred regional temperature change for late-glacial Europe. Nature communications, 5(1), p. 4914. Nature Publishing Group 10.1038/ncomms5914

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Comparisons of climate model hindcasts with independent proxy data are essential for assessing model performance in non-analogue situations. However, standardized palaeoclimate data sets for assessing the spatial pattern of past climatic change across continents are lacking for some of the most dynamic episodes of Earth’s recent past. Here we present a new chironomid-based palaeotemperature dataset designed to assess climate model hindcasts of regional summer temperature change in Europe during the late-glacial and early Holocene. Latitudinal and longitudinal patterns of inferred temperature change are in excellent agreement with simulations by the ECHAM-4 model, implying that atmospheric general circulation models like ECHAM-4 can successfully predict regionally diverging temperature trends in Europe, even when conditions differ significantly from present. However, ECHAM-4 infers larger amplitudes of change and higher temperatures during warm phases than our palaeotemperature estimates, suggesting that this and similar models may overestimate past and potentially also future summer temperature changes in Europe.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

10 Strategic Research Centers > Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR)
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS) > Palaeoecology
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Plant Sciences (IPS)

UniBE Contributor:

Heiri, Oliver, Samartin, Stéphanie, Tinner, Willy, Lotter, André Franz

Subjects:

500 Science > 580 Plants (Botany)

ISSN:

2041-1723

Publisher:

Nature Publishing Group

Language:

English

Submitter:

Peter Alfred von Ballmoos-Haas

Date Deposited:

26 Sep 2014 10:28

Last Modified:

02 Mar 2023 23:25

Publisher DOI:

10.1038/ncomms5914

Uncontrolled Keywords:

Earth sciences, Climate science

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.58725

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/58725

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