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GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 32, L23711, doi:10.1029/2005GL024155, 2005

Are multiproxy climate reconstructions robust?

Gerd Bürger

Institut für Meteorologie, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany


Ulrich Cubasch

Institut für Meteorologie, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany


Abstract

64 climate reconstructions, based on regression of temperature fields on multi-proxies and mutually distinguished by at least one of six standard criteria, cover an entire spread of millennial histories. No single criterion is accountable for the spread, which appears to depend on a complicated interplay of the criteria. The uncertainty is traced back to the fact that regression is applied here in an extrapolative manner, with millennial proxy variations exceeding the standard calibration scale by a factor of 5 and more. Even if linearity still holds for that larger domain the model error propagates in a way that is proportional to both the estimation error and the proxy variations, and is thus extrapolated accordingly. This is particularly critical for the parameter-loaded multiproxy methods. Without a model error estimate and without techniques to keep it small, it is not clear how these methods can be salvaged to become robust.

Received 30 July 2005; accepted 1 November 2005; published 14 December 2005.

Index Terms: 1616 Global Change: Climate variability (1635, 3305, 3309, 4215, 4513); 3305 Atmospheric Processes: Climate change and variability (1616, 1635, 3309, 4215, 4513); 3344 Atmospheric Processes: Paleoclimatology (0473, 4900).

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Citation: Bürger, G., and U. Cubasch (2005), Are multiproxy climate reconstructions robust?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L23711, doi:10.1029/2005GL024155.