Comment on egusphere-2022-1039

Abstract

Here we investigate how uncertainties in the solar and volcanic forcing records of the past millennium affect the large-scale temperature response of a 2-box impulse response model. We use different published solar forcing records and present a new volcanic forcing ensemble which accounts for random uncertainties in eruption dating and sulfur injection amount. The simulations are compared to proxy reconstructions from PAGES 2k and Northern hemispheric tree-ring data. We find that low solar forcing is most consistent with all the proxy reconstructions, even when accounting for volcanic uncertainty and that the residuals are well in line with CMIP6 control variability at centennial timescales. Volcanic forcing uncertainty induces a significant spread in the temperature response, especially at periods of peak forcing. For individual eruptions and superposed epoch analyses volcanic uncertainty can strongly affect the agreement with proxy reconstructions, and may explain previous proxy-model discrepancies.