Abstract
Curated global climate data have been generated from climate model outputs for the last 120,000 years, whereas reconstructions going back even further have been lacking due to the high computational cost of climate simulations. Here, we present a statistically-derived global terrestrial climate dataset for every 1,000 years of the last 800,000 years. It is based on a set of linear regressions between 72 existing HadCM3 climate simulations of the last 120,000 years and external forcings consisting of CO2, orbital parameters, and land type. The estimated climatologies were interpolated to 0.5° resolution and bias-corrected using present-day climate. The data compare well with the original HadCM3 simulations and with long-term proxy records. Our dataset includes monthly temperature, precipitation, cloud cover, and 17 bioclimatic variables. In addition, we derived net primary productivity and global biome distributions using the BIOME4 vegetation model. The data are a relevant source for different research areas, such as archaeology or ecology, to study the long-term effect of glacial-interglacial climate cycles for periods beyond the last 120,000 years.
Highlights
Background & SummaryStudying the ecology and environment throughout past climatic changes often involves environmental reconstructions that are either based on paleoclimate proxies or on paleoclimate simulations
Present or future climate simulations are based on comprehensive Global Climate Models (GCMs) that resolve processes at high temporal and spatial resolution, such as those used in the fifth IPCC Assessment Report[1]
Transient simulations of tens or hundreds of thousands of years, we rely on simulations from Earth System Models of Intermediate Complexity (EMICs)[2,3] but they come at the cost of lower spatial resolution and a simplified representation of the climate system[4]
Summary
Studying the ecology and environment throughout past climatic changes often involves environmental reconstructions that are either based on paleoclimate proxies or on paleoclimate simulations. Present or future climate simulations are based on comprehensive Global Climate Models (GCMs) that resolve processes at high temporal and spatial resolution, such as those used in the fifth IPCC Assessment Report[1]. There are a some high-resolution paleoclimate data sets readily available for download, for example, WorldClim[5], PaleoClim[6], or ecoClimate[7], their temporal coverage is limited to a few snapshots of key periods in the past, for example, Mid-Holocene (6,000 years before present (BP)) the Last Glacial Maximum (21,000 years BP), or the Last Interglacial Period (130,000 years BP). Continuous climate data sets of the past, based on HadCM39 snapshots, have become available more recently, for example a Northern Hemisphere data set for the last 60,000 years[10] or a bias-corrected, high-resolution terrestrial climate data set of the last 120,000 years[11]. We validated the long-term climate change signal using time series of various proxy records
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