Geology topics

A.E. Viau

Publications and source records attributed to A.E. Viau.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2017

A global multiproxy database for temperature reconstructions of the Common Era

Reproducible climate reconstructions of the Common Era (1 CE to present) are key to placing industrial-era warming into the context of natural climatic variability. Here we present a community-sourced database of temperature-sensitive proxy records from the PAGES2k initiative. The database gathers 692 records from 648 locations, including all continental regions and major ocean basins. The records are from trees, ice, sediment, corals, speleothems, documentary evidence, and other archives. They range in length from 50 to 2000 years, with a median of 547 years, while temporal resolution ranges from biweekly to centennial. Nearly half of the proxy time series are significantly correlated with HadCRUT4.2 surface temperature over the period 1850–2014. Global temperature composites show a remarkable degree of coherence between high- and low-resolution archives, with broadly similar patterns across archive types, terrestrial versus marine locations, and screening criteria. The database is suited to investigations of global and regional temperature variability over the Common Era, and is shared in the Linked Paleo Data (LiPD) format, including serializations in Matlab, R and Python.

Scientific Data↗

USGS2010

Pollen-based continental climate reconstructions at 6 and 21 ka: A global synthesis

Subfossil pollen and plant macrofossil data derived from 14 C-dated sediment profiles can provide quantitative information on glacial and interglacial climates. The data allow climate variables related to growing-season warmth, winter cold, and plant-available moisture to be reconstructed. Continental-scale reconstructions have been made for the mid-Holocene (MH, around 6 ka) and Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, around 21 ka), allowing comparison with palaeoclimate simulations currently being carried out as part of the fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The synthesis of the available MH and LGM climate reconstructions and their uncertainties, obtained using modern-analogue, regression and model-inversion techniques, is presented for four temperature variables and two moisture variables. Reconstructions of the same variables based on surface-pollen assemblages are shown to be accurate and unbiased. Reconstructed LGM and MH climate anomaly patterns are coherent, consistent between variables, and robust with respect to the choice of technique. They support a conceptual model of the controls of Late Quaternary climate change whereby the first-order effects of orbital variations and greenhouse forcing on the seasonal cycle of temperature are predictably modified by responses of the atmospheric circulation and surface energy balance.

Climate Dynamics↗

USGS2005

Modern pollen data from North America and Greenland for multi-scale paleoenvironmental applications

The modern pollen network in North America and Greenland is presented as a database for use in quantitative calibration studies and paleoenvironmental reconstructions. The georeferenced database includes 4634 samples from all regions of the continent and 134 pollen taxa that range from ubiquitous to regionally diagnostic taxa. Climate data and vegetation characteristics were assigned to every site. Automated and manual procedures were used to verify the accuracy of geographic coordinates and identify duplicate records among datasets, incomplete pollen sums, and other potential errors. Data are currently available for almost all of North America, with variable density. Pollen taxonomic diversity, as measured by the Shannon-Weiner coefficient, varies as a function of location, as some vegetation regions are dominated by one or two major pollen producers, while other regions have a more even composition of pollen taxa. Squared-chord distances computed between samples show that most modern pollen samples find analogues within their own vegetation zone. Both temperature and precipitation inferred from best analogues are highly correlated with observed values but temperature exhibits the strongest relation. Maps of the contemporary distribution of several pollen types in relation to the range of the plant taxon illustrate the correspondence between plant and pollen ranges. ?? 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Quaternary Science Reviews↗