High resolution climate reconstructions for southern South America: Optimizing the predictor network

De Mendoza CONICET

LOTRED-SA (Long-Term climate REconstruction and Dynamics of southern South America) is a collaborative initiative under the umbrella of PAGES having the objective to perform high resolution multi proxy climate field reconstructions for southern South America (SSA) fort the past ca. 500 years.

Time series from annually resolved natural climate archives in SSA were combined with proxy data derived from documentary evidence as well as from sites outside of SSA making use of teleconnection patterns such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) or the Antarctic Oscillation (AAO).

I present methods and results of setting up an optimized predictor network in order to explain a significant portion of SSA’s cold and warm season variability.

A special focus is put on the tree ring and documentary records, which were screened and optimized for the purpose of continental scale climate field reconstructions. The South American tree ring records were combined into meaningful clusters and newly detrended in order to preserve as much low frequency variability as possible. The documentary time series were prolonged to the 20^th century using statistical models based on a novel approach incorporating weather information from local newspapers of Mendoza.

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