Evaluation of proxies for European and North Atlantic temperature field reconstructions

Abstract

We evaluate the importance of high‐resolution proxies for boreal winter (October to March) and summer (April to September) European and North Atlantic temperature reconstructions. Multiple regression, backward elimination and cross‐validation techniques are used to achieve this goal. The analysis considers natural proxies and synthetic “pseudo‐documentary indices”. The results suggest that the most valuable predictors for European winter temperature are documentary‐based indices, while tree‐rings performed best for the warm season. It was also shown that the temperature signal in a speleothem from Scotland may be used for further winter and summer temperature reconstructions over parts of the Atlantic Ocean. This study represents a step towards the optimal selection of proxies which will improve temperature reconstructions.