An extended Arctic proxy temperature database for the past 2,000 years

Abstract

Robust climate reconstructions of the most recent centuries and millennia are invaluable for placing modern warming in the context of natural variability. Here we present an extended and revised database (version 1.1) of proxy temperature records recently used to reconstruct Arctic temperatures for the past 2,000 years. The datasets are presented in a machine-readable format, and have been extended with the geochronologic data and consistently generated time-uncertain ensembles, which will be useful in future analyses of the influence of geochronologic uncertainty. A standardized description of the seasonality of the temperature response for each record, as reported by the original authors, is also included to motivate a more nuanced approach to integrating records with variable seasonal sensitivities. Despite the predominance of seasonal, rather than annual, temperature responders in the database, comparisons with the instrumental record of temperature suggest that, as a whole, the datasets best record annual temperature variability across the Arctic, especially in northeast Canada and Greenland, where the density of records is highest.