LOTRED-SA

Overview

Regional high-resolution multi-proxy climate reconstructions for the last ca. 1000 years were a priority area of future research within IGBP-PAGES (Wanner 2005). While considerable progress was made on the northern hemisphere (Pauling et al. 2006), adequate data sets and reconstructions were missing for the southern hemisphere.

Regional reconstructions are particularly important since regional climate change and extremes exhibit much larger amplitudes than hemispheric and global reconstructions. Monthly to seasonal temperature reconstruction for Europe since 1500 AD (e.g. Luterbacher et al. 2004; Xoplaki et al. 2005) and the drought reconstruction for the western US (Cook et al. 2004) set new standards for regional scales. Similar studies were missing for other regions of the world.

Aims

This LOTRED-SA initiative was conceived as a collaborative long-term effort seeking to:

1. Collate the large number of disperse already existing and new multi-proxy paleoclimate data sets (documentary data, early instrumental data and natural proxies) for the last ca. 1000 - 2000 years available for South America, and

2. Use the Mann et al. (1998), Luterbacher et al. (2004) and Moberg et al. (2005) methodologies to work towards a regional reconstruction at different temporal and spatial resolution for southern South America.

Read LOTRED-SA's initial proposal here.

References

Briffa, K.R. and Osborn, T.J., 2002: Blowing Hot and Cold, Science, 295: 2227-2228

Cook, E.R., Woodhouse, C.A., Eakin, C.M., Meko, D.M. and Stahle, D.W., 2004: Long-Term Aridity Changes in the Western United States, Science, 306: 1015-1018.

Luterbacher, J., Dietrich, D., Xoplaki, E., Grosjean, M. and Wanner, H., 2004: European Seasonal and Annual Temperature Variability, Trends, and Extremes Since 1500, Science, 303: 1499-1503.

Mann, M.E., Bradley, R.S. and Hughes, M.K., 1998: Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries, Nature, 392: 779-787.

Moberg, A., Sonechkin, D.M, Holmgren, K., Datsenko, N.M. and Karlén, W., 2005: Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data, Nature, 433: 613-617.

Pauling, A., Luterbacher, J., Casty, C. and Wanner, H., 2006: Five hundred years of gridded high-resolution precipitation reconstructions over Europe and the connection to large-scale circulation, Climate Dynamics, 26(4): 387-405.

Wanner, H., 2005: Call for a PAGES Initiative on "Past Regional Climate Variability", PAGES News, 13(1): 19-21.

Xoplaki, E., Luterbacher, J., Paeth, H., Dietrich, D., Steiner, N., Grosjean, M. and Wanner, H., 2005: European spring and autumn temperature variability and change of extremes over the last half millennium, Geophysical Research Letters, 32, L15713.