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Synchronization of summer peak temperatures in the Medieval Climate Anomaly and Little Ice Age across the Northern Hemisphere varies with space and time scales

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Abstract

Previous studies have suggested that preindustrial climate epochs such as the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) and Little Ice Age (LIA) did not occur synchronously across large areas of the globe. However, it is still unclear whether and to what extent this conception is independent on the space and time scales considered. Here, we assess the agreement of MCA and LIA peak temperatures at various timescales (i.e., from 51 to 351 years) by analyzing proxy-based temperature reconstructions at local, regional, and continental scales across the Northern Hemisphere. We show that the synchronization of the MCA and LIA peak temperatures tends to be more coherent at longer time and larger space scales. At local and regional scales, the timing of MCA and LIA peak temperatures differs substantially, in line with previous findings. At continental scale, there is still no rigorous synchronization of these climate epochs, but the differences of the timing of the MCA/LIA peak temperatures are mostly smaller than five decades at multi-centennial timescales. The time and space dependent synchronization is related to the relative contribution of variations in external forcing and internal variability at these different scales. These results on the synchronization are robust across several different proxy-based reconstructions used in this study, but the precise timing of the MCA maximum and LIA minimum temperatures detected is largely influenced by the uncertainties in temperature reconstructions. Our results support the relevance of the terms MCA and LIA at long time and large space scales, and suggest that both external forcing and internal variability played roles in driving these climatic epochs.

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Data availability

The millennial-length temperature reconstructions at locals from tree ring data were downloaded at https://www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb09climatology/reconranking/, and from ice core δ18O data were downloaded at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/paleo-search/study/21171. PAGES2k continental-scale temperature reconstructions are available at https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo1797#Sect. 13, https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/pages2k/, and https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/paleo-search/study/19600. The multi-proxy temperature field reconstructions are available at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/reconstructions/neukom2019/.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the PAGES2k network members and many others for making their temperature reconstructions publicly available.

Funding

JW and MF are supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (grant no. 2017YFA0603302). BY, JW, and JL are supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 41888101 and 41977383). JW also acknowledges the support by the Youth Innovation Promotion Association Foundation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. 2018471).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Desert and Desertification, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Jianglin Wang, Bao Yang, Jingjing Liu & Shuyuan Kang

  2. CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Bao Yang

  3. Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, China

    Miao Fang

  4. College of Geography and Environmental Science, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, 321004, China

    Zhiyuan Wang

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  1. Jianglin Wang
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  2. Bao Yang
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  3. Miao Fang
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Contributions

JW and BY designed the study. JW carried out the data analysis and made the figures with the contributions from MF and ZW. JW drafted and revised the manuscript with input from BY, MF, ZW, JL and SK.

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Correspondence to Jianglin Wang.

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Wang, J., Yang, B., Fang, M. et al. Synchronization of summer peak temperatures in the Medieval Climate Anomaly and Little Ice Age across the Northern Hemisphere varies with space and time scales. Clim Dyn 60, 3455–3470 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06524-6

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