NOAA Paleoclimatology What's New

World Data Center for Paleoclimatology, NCDC Paleoclimatology Branch

The World Data Center for Paleoclimatology features newly archived paleoclimatic data and climate reconstructions relevant to important issues in paleoclimatology, plus new services we offer to the scientific community. For a complete listing of recent data contributions, please click the "most recent ten contributions" link on our Contribution Series Search page

Please check our archived pages for What's New sections for the years: 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, and 1995.

What's New for 2008:

	Palaeoclimate Jansen et al. IPCC Fourth Assessment, Working Group 1 In Solomon et al. Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA. This chapter assesses palaeoclimatic data and knowledge of how the climate system changes over interannual to millennial time scales, and how well these variations can be simulated with climate models. Additional palaeoclimatic perspectives are included in other chapters. Palaeoclimate science has made significant advances since the 1970s, when a primary focus was on the origin of the ice ages, the possibility of an imminent future ice age, and the first explorations of the so-called Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period. Even in the first IPCC assessment (IPCC, 1990), many climatic variations prior to the instrumental record were not that well known or understood. Fifteen years later, understanding is much improved, more quantitative and better integrated with respect to observations and modelling.
	A European pattern climatology 1766-2000 Casty et al. Climate Dynamics Volume 29, Numbers 7-8, December, 2007. doi:10.1007/s00382-007-0257-6 Using monthly independently reconstructed gridded European fields for the 500 hPa geopotential height, temperature, and precipitation covering the last 235 years we investigate the temporal and spatial evolution of these key climate variables and assess the leading combined patterns of climate variability. Seasonal European temperatures show a positive trend mainly over the last 40 years with absolute highest values since 1766. Precipitation indicates no clear trend. Spatial correlation technique reveals that winter, spring, and autumn covariability between European temperature and precipitation is mainly influenced by advective processes, whereas during summer convection plays the dominant role. The dominant patterns of climate variability for winter, spring, and autumn resemble the North Atlantic Oscillation and show a distinct positive trend during the past 40 years for winter and spring. A positive trend is also detected for summer pattern 2, which reflects an increased influence of the Azores High towards central Europe and the Mediterranean coinciding with warm and dry conditions.
	Fire Climatology Swetnam and Anderson eds. International Journal of Wildland Fire Special Issue Vol. 17. No. 1. February 2008 This issue of the International Journal of Wildland Fire highlights significant work presented at a session on fire climatology at the 3rd International Fire Ecology and Management Congress in San Diego, USA, in 2006. Manuscripts in this special issue have passed rigorous peer-review and offer more detail that presented at the Congress. A defining feature of this collection is the inclusion of both modern and palaeofire perspectives, working with a broad range of data over a range of temporal and spatial scales. Three themes therefore are: modern fire climatology from documentary records; palaeofire climatology from tree rings and fire scars; and palaeofire climatology from sedimentary charcoal and pollen. These themes provide contrasting or complementary insights about fire regime changes and responses to climate.
	Grape harvest dates as a proxy for Swiss April to August temperature reconstructions back to AD 1480 Meier et al. Geophysical Research Letters Vol. 34, L20705, doi:10.1029/2007GL031381 We present an annually resolved record of grape harvest dates for Switzerland. The strong negative relationship between grape harvest dates and April-August temperatures allowed a new reconstruction, with associated uncertainties, to be derived back to 1480. Calibration (1928-1979) was performed with monthly data from the Basel and Geneva stations and verified over 1980-2006. Twelve days of grape harvest difference correspond to around 1°C April-August temperature difference. Periods cooler (late grape harvest dates) than the 1961-1990 mean are reconstructed during the 17th century and at the beginning of the 19th century. Warmer conditions were experienced in the early 18th century and during the recent decades, in agreement with grape harvest temperature reconstructions from France and other independent temperature estimates. On decadal (annual) time-scales the earliest harvests were in the 1580s (2003) and the latest vintages in the 1740s (1816). Large tropical volcanic eruptions led to significantly later grape harvest dates (cooling) one to two years after the event.

What's New for 2007:

Data from Stott et al. Science "Southern Hemisphere and Deep-Sea Warming Led Deglacial Atmospheric CO₂ Rise and Tropical Warming".
Data from Jouzel et al. Science "Orbital and Millennial Antarctic Climate Variability over the Past 800,000 Years"
Data from Partin et al. Nature "Millennial-scale trends in west Pacific warm pool hydrology since the Last Glacial Maximum"
Data from Wilson et al. Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres "A matter of divergence: Tracking recent warming at hemispheric scales using tree ring data"
Data from Kawamura et al. Nature "Northern Hemisphere forcing of climatic cycles in Antarctica over the past 360,000 years"
Data from Donnelly and Woodruff Nature "Intense hurricane activity over the past 5,000 years controlled by El Niño and the West African monsoon"
Data from Weldeab et al. Science "155,000 Years of West African Monsoon and Ocean Thermal Evolution"
Data from Nyberg et al. Nature "Low Atlantic hurricane activity in the 1970s and 1980s compared to the past 270 years"
Data from Pauling et al. Climate Dynamics "Five hundred years of gridded high-resolution precipitation reconstructions over Europe and the connection to large-scale circulation"
Data from Meko et al. Geophysical Research Letters "Medieval drought in the upper Colorado River Basin"
Data from Newton et al. Geophysical Research Letters "Climate and hydrographic variability in the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool during the last millennium"
Data from Leavitt et al. EOS " Tree-ring carbon isotope data and drought maps for the U.S. Southwest"
Data from Yancheva et al. Nature "Influence of the intertropical convergence zone on the East Asian monsoon"
Data from Williams et al. American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists "Atlas of Pollen-Vegetation-Climate Relationships for the United States and Canada"
Data from Viau et al. Journal of Geophysical Research "Millennial-scale temperature variations in North America during the Holocene"

What's New for 2006:

Data from Cheng et al. Geology "A penultimate glacial monsoon record from Hulu Cave and two-phase glacial terminations".
Data from Schmidt et al. Nature Rapid subtropical North Atlantic salinity oscillations across Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles".
Data from Wilson et al. Journal of Geophysical Research - Oceans "Two-hundred-fifty years of reconstructed and modeled tropical temperatures".
Data from D'Arrigo et al. Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres "On the long-term context for late twentieth century warming".
Data from Schaefer et al. Science "Ice Record of δ13C for Atmospheric CH4 Across the Younger Dryas-Preboreal Transition".
Data from Huybers Science "Early Pleistocene Glacial Cycles and the Integrated Summer Insolation Forcing".
Data from Smith et al. International Journal of Climatology "Reconstructing hemispheric-scale climates from multiple stalagmite records".
Data from Ellison et al. Science "Surface and Deep Ocean Interactions During the Cold Climate Event 8200 Years Ago".
Data from Luterbacher et al. Science "European Seasonal and Annual Temperature Variability, Trends, and Extremes Since 1500".
Data from Xoplaki et al. Geophysical Research Letters "European spring and autumn temperature variability and change of extremes over the last half millennium".
Data from Woodhouse et al. Water Resources Research "Updated Streamflow Reconstructions for the Upper Colorado River Basin".
Data from Lawrence et al. Science "Evolution of the Eastern Tropical Pacific Through Plio-Pleistocene Glaciation".
Data from Davi et al. Journal of Climate "Extension of Drought Records for Central Asia Using Tree Rings: West-Central Mongolia".
Data from Wolff et al. Nature "Southern Ocean sea-ice extent, productivity and iron flux over the past eight glacial cycles".
Data from Osborn and Briffa Science "The Spatial Extent of 20th-Century Warmth in the Context of the Past 1200 Years".
Data from Pederson et al. Earth Interactions "Long-Duration Drought Variability and Impacts on Ecosystem Services: A Case Study from Glacier National Park, Montana".

What's New for 2005:

Data from Spahni et al. Science, "Atmospheric methane and nitrous oxide of the late Pleistocene from Antarctic ice cores."
Data from Siegenthaler et al. Science, "Stable Carbon Cycle-Climate Relationship During the Late Pleistocene"
Data from Kaiser et al., Paleoceanography , "A 70-kyr sea surface temperature record off southern Chile (Ocean Drilling Program Site 1233)"
Data from Casty et al., International Journal of Climatology , "Temperature and Precipitation Variability in the European Alps Since 1500."
Data from Pelejero et al., Science, "Preindustrial to modern interdecadal variability in coral reef pH."
Data from Salzer and Kipfmueller , Climatic Change , "Reconstructed Temperature and Precipitation on a Millennial Timescale from Tree-Rings in the Southern Colorado Plateau, U.S.A. "
Data from Oerlemans, Science, "Extracting a Climate Signal from 169 Glacier Records."
Data from Tripati et al., Nature, "Eocene bipolar glaciation associated with global carbon cycle changes."
Data from Mangini et al., Earth and Planetary Science Letters , "Reconstruction of temperature in the Central Alps during the past 2000 yr from a δ18O stalagmite record."
Data from Cruz et al., Nature, "Insolation-driven changes in atmospheric circulation over the past 116,000 years in subtropical Brazil"
Data from Moberg et al., Nature, "Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data"
Data from Liu and Herbert Nature, "High-latitude influence on the eastern equatorial Pacific climate in the early Pleistocene epoch"
Data from Solanki et al. Nature, "An unusually active Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years. "
Data from de Garidel-Thoron et al. Nature, "Stable sea surface temperatures in the western Pacific warm pool over the past 1.75 million years "
Data from Chuine et al. Nature, "Grape ripening as a past climate indicator"
Data from lamy et al. Science, "Antarctic Timing of Surface Water Changes off Chile and Patagonian Ice Sheet Response."

What's New for 2004:

Data from Jones and Mann Reviews of Geophysics , "Climate Over Past Millennia."
Data from Huang, Geophysical Research Letters , "Merging Information from Different Resources for New Insights into Climate Change in the Past and Future"
Data from Cook et al., Science, "Long-Term Aridity Changes in the Western United States"
Data from North Greenland Ice Core Project members, Nature, "High-resolution record of Northern Hemisphere climate extending into the last interglacial period"
Data from Stott et al., Nature, "Decline of surface temperature and salinity in the western tropical Pacific Ocean in the Holocene epoch."
Data from EPICA Community Members, Nature , "Eight glacial cycles from an Antarctic ice core"
A Paleo Perspective on Abrupt Climate Change
Data from Felis et al., Nature, "Increased seasonality in Middle East temperatures during the last interglacial period. "
Data from Yuan et al., Science, "Timing, Duration, and Transitions of the Last Interglacial Asian Monsoon."
Data from Schmidt et al., Nature, "Links between salinity variation in the Caribbean and North Atlantic thermohaline circulation "
Data from Hughen et al., Science, "¹⁴C Activity and Global Carbon Cycle Changes over the Past 50,000 Years"
Data from Flückiger et al., Global Biogeochemical Cycles , "N₂O and CH₄ variations during the last glacial epoch: Insight into global processes "
Data from Genty et al., Nature, "Precise dating of Dansgaard-Oeschger climate oscillations in western Europe from stalagmite data "

What's New for 2003:

Data from Ge et al., Holocene, "Winter half-year temperature reconstruction for the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River and Yangtze River, China, during the past 2000 years."
Data from Williams et al., Ecological Monographs , "Late Quaternary vegetation dynamics in North America: scaling from taxa to biomes"
Spanish Version of Paleo Perspectives and Educational Outreach
Data from Booth and Jackson, Holocene, "A high-resolution record of late-Holocene moisture variability from a Michigan raised bog, USA"
Data from Lea et al., Science, "Synchroneity of Tropical and High-Latitude Atlantic Temperatures over the Last Glacial Termination"
International Multiproxy Paleofire Database
Data from Bar-Matthews et al., Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta , "Sea-land oxygen isotopic relationships from planktonic foraminifera and speleothems in the Eastern Mediterranean region and their implication for paleorainfall during interglacial intervals"
Data from Pahnke et al., Science , "340,000-Year Centennial-Scale Marine Record of Southern Hemisphere Climatic Oscillation"
Data from Mann and Jones, Geophysical Research Letters , "Global Surface Temperatures over the Past Two Millennia"
Data from Tan et al., Geophysical Research Letters , "Cyclic rapid warming on centennial-scale revealed by a 2650-year stalagmite record of warm season temperature"
Data from Ammann et al., Geophysical Research Letters , "A monthly and latitudinally varying volcanic forcing dataset in simulations of 20th century climate"
Data from Cobb et al., Nature, "El Niño/Southern Oscillation and tropical Pacific climate during the last millennium"
Data from D'Arrigo et al., Geophysical Research Letters , "Tree-ring reconstructions of temperature and sea-level pressure variability associated with the warm-season Arctic Oscillation since AD 1650"
Data from Graumlich et al., Climatic Change , "Upper Yellowstone River Flow and Teleconnections with Pacific Basin Climate Variability during the Past Three Centuries"
Data from Touchan et al., International Journal of Climatology , "Preliminary reconstructions of spring precipitation in southwestern Turkey from tree-ring width"
Data from Cook et al., International Journal of Climatology , "Dendroclimatic Signals in Long Tree-Ring Chronologies from the Himalayas of Nepal"
Data from Friddell et al., Geophysical Research Letters , "Increased northeast Pacific climatic variability during the warm middle Holocene"
Data from Hantemirov and Shiyatov, Holocene , "A continuous multimillennial ring-width chronology in Yamal, northwestern Siberia"
Data from McCulloch et al., Nature, "Coral record of increased sediment flux to the inner Great Barrier Reef since European settlement"
Data from Mann et al., Journal of Geophysical Research -Atmospheres , "Optimal Surface Temperature Reconstructions Using Terrestrial Borehole Data"
The Climate TimeLine Information Tool

What's New for 2002:

Data from Woodhouse et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society , "Drought in the Western Great Plains, 1845-56: Impacts and Implications"
Data from Ni et al., International Journal of Climatology, "Cool-season precipitation in the southwestern USA since AD 1000: comparison of linear and nonlinear techniques for reconstruction"
Data from Moore et al., Nature, "Climate change in the North Pacific region over the past three centuries"
Data from Noren et al., Nature , "Millennial-scale Storminess Variability in the Northeastern United States during the Holocene Epoch"
Data from Moy et al., Nature , "Variability of El Niño/Southern Oscillation activity at millennial timescales during the Holocene epoch"
Data from Thompson et al., Science , "Kilimanjaro Ice Core Records: Evidence of Holocene Climate Change in Tropical Africa"
Data from Yang et al., Geophysical Research Letters, "General characteristics of temperature variation in China during the last two millennia."
New WDC-Paleo Mirror Sites in China and India
Data from St. George and Nielsen, Quaternary Research , "Hydroclimatic change in southern Manitoba since A.D. 1409 inferred from tree rings."
Data from Cook et al., Journal of Climate , "A Well-Verified, Multiproxy Reconstruction of the Winter North Atlantic Oscillation Index since A.D. 1400"
Data from Benson et al., Quaternary Science Reviews , "Holocene multidecadal and multicentennial droughts affecting Northern California and Nevada"
Data from Anderson et al., Science , "Increase in the Asian SW Monsoon During the Past Four Centuries"
Data from Lloyd and Fastie, Climatic Change , "Spatial and temporal variability in the growth and climate response of treeline trees in Alaska"
Data from Lamy et al., Paleoceanography , "High- and low-latitude climate control on the position of the southern Peru-Chile Current during the Holocene."
Data from Viau and Gajewski, Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmosphere , "Holocene variations in the global hydrological cycle quantified by objective gridding of lake level databases"
Data from Schuster et al., Environmental Science and Technology , "Atmospheric Mercury Deposition during the Last 270 Years: A Glacial Ice Core Record of Natural and Anthropogenic Sources"
New Additions to the Software Library: PALYHELP and Arand.
Data from Flückiger et al., Global Biogeochemical Cycles , "High-resolution Holocene N₂O ice core record and its relationship with CH₄ and CO₂"
Data from Jones et al., Science , "The Evolution of Climate Over the Last Millennium"
Data from Luterbacher et al., Atmospheric Science Letters, "Extending North Atlantic Oscillation reconstructions back to 1500"
Data from Briffa et al., Journal of Geophysical Research, "Low-frequency Temperature Variations from a Northern Tree Ring Density Network"
Data from Andrus et al., Science , "Otolith δ18O Record of Mid-Holocene Sea Surface Temperatures in Peru"
Data from Hendy et al., Science , "Abrupt Decrease in Tropical Pacific Sea Surface Salinity at End of Little Ice Age"
Data from Garcia et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, "Atmospheric Circulation Changes in the Tropical Pacific Inferred from the Voyages of the Manila Galleons in the Sixteenth - Eighteenth Centuries"

What's New for 2001:

Data from Luterbacher et al., Climate Dynamics, "Reconstruction of Sea Level Pressure fields over the eastern North Atlantic and Europe back to 1500 "
Data from Glueck and Stockton, International Journal of Climatology, "Reconstruction of the North Atlantic Oscillation, 1429-1983 "
Data from Tudhope et al. Science, "Variability in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation Through a Glacial-Interglacial Cycle "
Global Database of Borehole Temperatures and Climate Reconstructions
Data from Robertson et al. Journal of Geophysical Research , "Hypothesized Climate Forcing Time Series for the Last 500 Years "
Data from Herbert et al. Science , "Collapse of the California Current During Glacial Maxima Linked to Climate Change on Land "
Paleotempestology Resource Center
Data from Bonnefille and Chalié Global and Planetary Change , "Pollen-inferred precipitation time-series from equatorial mountains, Africa, the last 40 kyr BP. "
Data from Pederson et al., Journal of Climate , "Hydrometeorological Reconstructions for Northeastern Mongolia Derived from Tree Rings: AD 1651-1995 "
Australian Institute of Marine Science Great Barrier Reef Coral Data
WSL-Birmensdorf Global Tree Ring Data Network
New data from the North American Plant Macrofossil Database
Data from Thompson et al., Science , "A 25,000 year tropical climate history from Bolivian ice cores "
Data from Thompson et al., Science , "Late Glacial Stage and Holocene tropical ice core records from Huascarán, Peru. "
Data from Monnin et al., Science , "Atmospheric CO₂ concentrations over the last glacial termination "
Data from Blunier and Brook , Science , "Timing of millennial-scale climate change in Antarctica and Greenland during the last glacial period "
Data from Biondi et al. , Journal of Climate , "North Pacific Decadal Climate Variability Since AD 1661 "

What's New for 2000:

Data from Hughen et al, Science, "Synchronous Radiocarbon and Climate Shifts During the Last Deglaciation"
Data from Felis et al, Paleoceanography, "A coral oxygen isotope record from the northern Red Sea documenting NAO, ENSO, and North Pacific teleconnections on Middle East climate variability since the year 1750. "
Data from Mann et al. Earth Interactions, "Global Temperature Patterns in Past Centuries: An Interactive Presentation"
Data from Linsley et al., Science , "Decadal Sea Surface Temperature Variability in the Sub-Tropical South Pacific from 1726 to 1997 A.D."
Data from Urban et al., Nature , "Influence of mean climate change on climate variability from a 155-year tropical Pacific coral record."
North American Drought: A Paleo Perspective
Data from Crowley Science , "Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years"
Data from Rittenour et al., Science , "El Niño-like Climate Teleconnections in New England During the Late Pleistocene"
Data from Indermühle et al., Geophysical Research Letters , "Atmospheric CO₂ Concentration from 60 to 20 Kyr BP from the Taylor Dome Ice Core, Antarctica"
Data from Verschuren et al., Nature , "Rainfall and drought in equatorial east Africa during the past 1,100 years"
Data from Fischer et al., Science , "Ice Core Records of Atmospheric CO₂ Around the Last Three Glacial Terminations"
Data from Smith et al., Nature , "Dual Modes of the Carbon Cycle Since the Last Glacial Maximum"

What's New for 1999:

Data from Flückiger et al, Science, "Variations in Atmospheric N₂O Concentration During Abrupt Climatic Changes"
Data from Indermühle et al, Nature, "Holocene Carbon-cycle Dynamics Based on CO₂ Trapped in Ice at Taylor Dome, Antarctica"
Data from Mann, Bradley, & Hughes, Geophysical Research Letters, "Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations"
A Paleo Perspective... on Global Warming
Data from Woodhouse and Overpeck, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society , "2000 Years of Drought Variability in the Central United States"

What's New for 1998:

Data from T. Blunier et al, Nature, "Asynchrony of Antarctic and Greenland Climate Change During the Last Glacial Period"
Data from Hughen et al, Radiocarbon 39, "A New ¹⁴C Calibration Data Set for the Last Deglaciation"
Data from Briffa, Jones, Schweingruber & Osborn, Nature, "Volcanic Eruptions & N. Hemisphere Summer Temperature"
Data from Mann, Bradley, & Hughes, Nature, "Global Six Century Temperature Patterns"
The Greenland Summit Ice Cores CD-ROM is online!
Data from Stahle, et al, Science , "The Lost Colony and Jamestown Droughts"

What's New for 1997:

Overpeck, et al, Science.
"Arctic Environmental Change of the Last 4 Centuries
The NOAA NESDIS Drought Variability WWW pages, online
Version 1.1 of Analyseries - Time Series Analysis
Report on the PAGES/Clivar Intersection
Introducing: Educational Outreach, NOAA Paleo Program
IGBP - Data Information System, WWW pages, online

What's New for 1996:

The PALE Search Engine
Documents from NOAA Paleoclimatology and PAGES are now available on the Web and via FTP
Contribution Series for paleoclimatic data
Search Engine for Paleocean Data
Education Slide Project - Two New Sets: Polar Ice Cores and Rock Varnish
Pollen Data: Mirror site in Europe at Medias France
International Tree Ring Data Bank and Display Software
Site Inventory of Latin American Pollen Database

What's New for 1995:

PaleoVu (vers. 1.1) - NOAA Paleoclimatology's browse and visualization tool for paleoclimate data is now available for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh


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