Paleoclimate data and general circulation model (GCM) simulations each provide valuable information about the evolution of climate in recent millennia.
However, although the GCMs produce comprehensive and physically consistent representations of the climate system, they cannot be considered to reflect the true evolution of Common Era climate because of uncertainties in initial conditions, coarse spatial resolution and other pragmatic simplifications.
On the other hand, spatially irregular networks of noisy proxy data record actual climatic phenomena, but with mixed fidelity and in irregular spatial distributions.
Proxy Surrogate Reconstruction 2k (PSR2k) seeks to exploit the strengths of both sources of paleoclimate information by integrating the empirical relationships of paleoclimate proxy records with the physical relationships of GCMs.
The PSR method represents an alternate to other means of combining proxy and model data (e.g. data assimilation) that is considerably more computationally "cost-effective".
The method uses existing GCM timeseries as a database of realistic climate states that are searched to identify the best spatial agreement between proxies and models in a given time domain. By withholding a subset of paleoclimate data from the selection of best analogs, validation statistics can be calculated to evaluate the skill of the PSR.
Once skillful analogs are identified, any of the model fields can be used to generate realistic timeseries or spatial distributions of dynamic variables or modes (e.g. AMOC, NAM, etc). This project leverages paleoclimate data compilation efforts, and in particular the marine proxy metadatabase compiled in Phase 1 of PAGES Ocean2k, to examine the patterns and dynamical connections of climate variability in recent millennia from a marine perspective.
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