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- Title
Separating Common Signal From Proxy Noise in Tree Rings.
- Authors
McPartland, M. Y.; Dolman, A. M.; Laepple, T.
- Abstract
Tree rings are the most widely‐used proxy records for reconstructing Common Era temperatures. Tree‐ring records correlate strongly with temperature on an interannual basis, but studies have found discrepancies between tree rings and climate models on longer timescales, indicating that low‐frequency noise could be prevalent in these archives. Using a large network of temperature‐sensitive tree‐ring records, we partition timeseries variance into a common (i.e., "signal") and non‐climatic (i.e., "noise") component using a frequency‐resolved signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) analysis. We find that the availability of stored resources from prior years (i.e., biological "memory") dampens the climate signal at high‐frequencies, and that independent noise reduces the SNR on long timescales. We also find that well‐replicated, millennial‐length records had the strongest common signal across centuries. Our work suggests that low‐frequency noise models are appropriate for use in pseudoproxy experiments, and speaks to the continued value of high‐quality data development as a top priority in dendroclimatology. Plain Language Summary: Tree rings contain valuable information about past variations in Earth's climate, but this information can be obscured by biological influences over tree‐ring formation, particularly when slow changes in climate are integrated with long biological trends. In this study, we measured the strength of the common signal and random noise in a network of tree‐ring records from across the Northern Hemisphere. We find that the emergence of non‐climatic trends decreases the similarity of nearby tree‐ring records to each other on long timescales. Key Points: Temperature‐sensitive tree‐ring records had the highest signal‐to‐noise ratios on an interannual basisNoise showed a positive relationship with timescale indicating presence of independent trends over long time periodsSignal‐to‐noise ratios were highest in tree‐ring density records and in records comprised of a greater number of individual trees
- Subjects
TREE-rings; SIGNAL-to-noise ratio; NOISE; DENSITY; ATMOSPHERIC models; CLIMATE change; DENDROCLIMATOLOGY
- Publication
Geophysical Research Letters, 2024, Vol 51, Issue 13, p1
- ISSN
0094-8276
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1029/2024GL109282