Reconstructing southern South America’s climate using historical documents, tree rings and other archives: The actual predictor network and its possibilities and limitations

R. NEUKOM; M. R. PRIETO; LOTRED-SA CONSORTIUM

Boston

Conferencia; AAG Annual Meeting 2008; 2008

Asociation of American Geographers (AAG)

Abstract LOTRED-SA (Long-Term climate Reconstruction and Dynamics of southern SouthAmerica) is a new collaborative initiative under the umbrella of PAGES having theobjective to perform high resolution multiproxy climate field reconstructions for southernSouth America (SSA).In a first step, the already existing and new paleoclimate data sets (documentary data,early instrumental data and data from natural archives) for the last ca. 1000 yearsavailable for SSA are being collected and evaluated. Sophisticated new methods willthen be applied to use these data for reconstructions of different climate parameters athigh temporal and spatial resolution with associated uncertainties. The reconstructedclimate variability, extremes and trends will be compared with results of generalcirculation model runs in order to detect the dominant processes driving these variationstoday and in the past.Long instrumental time series are sparse in SSA. Tree rings, which are mostly restrictedto the mountain chain of the Andes, and data series derived from historical informationare therefore the most important paleoclimate archives of high temporal resolution.However, most documentary-based time series do not cover the 20th century becausethe sources used to establish them do not do not extend to this period. These recordshave to be prolonged using present-day written sources, such as newspapers, andstatistical methods.This contribution reports on the possibilities and limitations of the presently availablepredictor network in SSA and on the methods and preliminary results of making theexisting historical climate time series suitable for the reconstruction purpose of LOTREDSA.