Updated gridded reconstruction of sea level pressure, temperature, and precipitation during winter in the North Atlantic region covering 1241-1970 CE

• Main Authors: Sjolte, Jesper, Tao, Qin, Muscheler, Raimund
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: climate reconstruction; ice core isotopes; sea level pressure; temperature; precipitation; North Atlantic; ice core
• Online Access: https://zenodo.org/record/8328301; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8328301

This dataset is an updated version of the gridded climate reconstruction by Sjolte et al. 2018 (SEA18): Solar and volcanic forcing of North Atlantic climate inferred from a process-based reconstruction, Climate of the Past, 14, 1179–1194, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-14-1179-2018. Relevant results of this new version (SEA18v2) will be soon available in our upcoming paper: Qin Tao, Jesper Sjolte, and Raimund Muscheler: Persistent Model Biases in the Spatial Variability of Winter North Atlantic Atmospheric Circulation (under review in Geophysical Research Letters). This dataset contains the gridded reconstruction of winter sea level pressure (slp), 2m temperature (t2m) and precipitation (precip) for the North Atlantic region over 1241-1970. Methodology: The new reconstruction (SEA18v2), has been optimized for a better representation of the variability of the main modes of sea level pressure. The original reconstruction, SEA18, was an ensemble of 39 model analogues for each year and the reconstruction comprised of the mean of the analogues. For the new version, SEA18v2, a different approach to calculating the ensemble mean of the analogues has been applied. While the overall evaluation and ranking of model analogues are the same as for SEA18, we now apply a weighting function so that poor-fitting model analogues receive less weight and good-fitting analogues receive more weight. Furthermore, we evaluate the main modes of the reconstructed SLP and test the minimum number of ensemble members that can be used and still retain skill for the temporal and spatial variability of the first three modes. Retaining 16 ensemble members gives better performance for the spatial patterns for the first three EOFs of SLP compared to SEA18 and good skill for the temporal variability of the NAO. This work was conducted as part of the project "Improved projections of wind strength and direction by testing climate models using seasonal climate reconstructions", supported by the Swedish Energy Agency (grant no. 51375-1).