Arctic Holocene proxy climate database - new approaches to assessing geochronological accuracy and encoding climate variables

• We present a systematic compilation of previously published Holocene proxy climate records from the Arctic. We identified 170 sites from north of 58 degrees N latitude where proxy time series extend back at least to 6 cal ka (all ages in this article are in calendar years before present - BP), are resolved at submillennial scale (at least one value every 400 +/- 200 years) and have age models constrained by at least one age every 3000 years. In addition to conventional meta-data for each proxy record (location, proxy type, reference), we include two novel parameters that add functionality to the database. First, climate interpretation is a series of fields that logically describe the specific climate variable(s) represented by the proxy record. It encodes the proxy-climate relation reported by authors of the original studies into a structured format to facilitate comparison with climate model outputs. Second, geochronology accuracy score (chron score) is a numerical rating that reflects the overall accuracy of C-14-based age models from lake and marine sediments. Chron scores were calculated using the original author-reported C-14 ages, which are included in this database. The database contains 320 records (some sites include multiple records) from six regions covering the circumpolar Arctic: Fennoscandia is the most densely sampled region (31% of the records), whereas only five records from the Russian Arctic met the criteria for inclusion. The database contains proxy records from lake sediment (60 %), marine sediment (32 %), glacier ice (5 %), and other sources. Most (61 %) reflect temperature (mainly summer warmth) and are primarily based on pollen, chironomid, or diatom assemblages. Many (15 %) reflect some aspect of hydroclimate as inferred from changes in stable isotopes, pollen and diatom assemblages, humification index in peat, and changes in equilibrium-line altitude of glaciers. This comprehensive database can be used in future studies to investigate the spatio-temporal pattern of Arctic Holocene climate changes and their causes. The Arctic Holocene data set is available from NOAA Paleoclimatology.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Geovetenskap och miljövetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Earth and Related Environmental Sciences (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)