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Concerns of assuming linearity in the reconstruction of thermal maxima

Nature volume 607, pages E12–E14 (2022)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 27 July 2022

The Original Article was published on 27 January 2021

arising from S. Bova et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-03155-x (2021)

Seasonal biases in proxy records are an outstanding issue in deciphering past climate evolution, and may contribute to the current discrepancy between models and proxy reconstructions during the Holocene, which is most pronounced in the northern extratropics1,2,3. Bova et al.4 reported a method of transforming seasonal into mean annual temperatures (the SAT method) at low and mid-latitudes, and concluded that the thermal maxima during the Holocene and last interglacial (LIG) were mainly an artefact of a seasonal proxy response. We provide evidence that, in addition to this geographic mismatch, key assumptions of the SAT method are violated, and more importantly, that the method by construction removes thermal maxima. Thus, the main findings of Bova et al.4 probably reflect peculiarities of the SAT method instead of shedding light on the so-called Holocene conundrum.

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Fig. 1: SAT method lacks skill in reconstructing simulated Holocene annual temperature.
Fig. 2: SAT method mutes thermal maxima.

Code availability

The R code for the performed analysis is deposited at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6564932.

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Acknowledgements

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme Starting Grant SPACE (grant agreement number 716092). F.H. is supported by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education with funding from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. We thank R. Hebert for discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Potsdam, Germany

    T. Laepple

  2. University of Bremen, MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences and Faculty of Geosciences, Bremen, Germany

    T. Laepple

  3. Boston College, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA

    J. Shakun

  4. Center for Climatic Research, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    F. He

  5. University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Geoscience, Madison, WI, USA

    S. Marcott

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  1. T. Laepple
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  2. J. Shakun
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  4. S. Marcott
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Contributions

All authors collaborated on the design of the study, the interpretation of the results and writing the manuscript. T.L. led the study and performed the evaluation of the SAT method on the model simulations.

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Correspondence to T. Laepple.

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Laepple, T., Shakun, J., He, F. et al. Concerns of assuming linearity in the reconstruction of thermal maxima. Nature 607, E12–E14 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04831-w

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