Since 65 million years ago (Ma), Earth's climate has undergone a significant and complex evolution, the finer details of which are now coming to light through investigations of deep-sea sediment cores. This evolution includes gradual trends of warming and cooling driven by tectonic processes on time scales of 10(5) to 10(7) years, rhythmic or periodic cycles driven by orbital processes with 10(4)- to 10(6)-year cyclicity, and rare rapid aberrant shifts and extreme climate transients with durations of 10(3) to 10(5) years. Here, recent progress in defining the evolution of global climate over the Cenozoic Era is reviewed. We focus primarily on the periodic and anomalous components of variability over the early portion of this era, as constrained by the latest generation of deep-sea isotope records. We also consider how this improved perspective has led to the recognition of previously unforeseen mechanisms for altering climate.

/pdf/trends-rhythms-and-aberrations-in-global-climate-65-ma-to-cflhxkixnq.pdf

Trends, Rhythms, and Aberrations in Global Climate 65 Ma to Present

On robust estimation of the location parameter

/pdf/statistical-analysis-in-climate-research-51ik9f04rx.pdf

Statistical Analysis in Climate Research

Surface winds and surface ocean hydrography in the subpolar North Atlantic appear to have been influenced by variations in solar output through the entire Holocene. The evidence comes from a close correlation between inferred changes in production rates of the cosmogenic nuclides carbon-14 and beryllium-10 and centennial to millennial time scale changes in proxies of drift ice measured in deep-sea sediment cores. A solar forcing mechanism therefore may underlie at least the Holocene segment of the North Atlantic's "1500-year" cycle. The surface hydrographic changes may have affected production of North Atlantic Deep Water, potentially providing an additional mechanism for amplifying the solar signals and transmitting them globally.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/294/5549/2130.full.pdf

Persistent Solar Influence on North Atlantic Climate During the Holocene

The Climate Hazards group Infrared Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS) dataset builds on previous approaches to ‘smart’ interpolation techniques and high resolution, long period of record precipitation estimates based on infrared Cold Cloud Duration (CCD) observations. The algorithm i) is built around a 0.05° climatology that incorporates satellite information to represent sparsely gauged locations, ii) incorporates daily, pentadal, and monthly 1981-present 0.05° CCD-based precipitation estimates, iii) blends station data to produce a preliminary information product with a latency of about 2 days and a final product with an average latency of about 3 weeks, and iv) uses a novel blending procedure incorporating the spatial correlation structure of CCD-estimates to assign interpolation weights. We present the CHIRPS algorithm, global and regional validation results, and show how CHIRPS can be used to quantify the hydrologic impacts of decreasing precipitation and rising air temperatures in the Greater Horn of Africa. Using the Variable Infiltration Capacity model, we show that CHIRPS can support effective hydrologic forecasts and trend analyses in southeastern Ethiopia.

/pdf/the-climate-hazards-infrared-precipitation-with-stations-a-2fzhj8nya2.pdf

The climate hazards infrared precipitation with stations--a new environmental record for monitoring extremes.

A high-resolution oxygen-isotope record from a thorium-uranium-dated stalagmite from southern Oman reflects variations in the amount of monsoon precipitation for the periods from 10.3 to 2.7 and 1.4 to 0.4 thousand years before the present (ky B.P.). Between 10.3 and 8 ky B.P., decadal to centennial variations in monsoon precipitation are in phase with temperature fluctuations recorded in Greenland ice cores, indicating that early Holocene monsoon intensity is largely controlled by glacial boundary conditions. After approximately 8 ky B.P., monsoon precipitation decreases gradually in response to changing Northern Hemisphere summer solar insolation, with decadal to multidecadal variations in monsoon precipitation being linked to solar activity.

http://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/pdf/fleitmann_2003.pdf

Holocene forcing of the Indian monsoon recorded in a stalagmite from southern Oman.

https://www.manfredmudelsee.com/publ/pdf/redfit.pdf

REDFIT: estimating red-noise spectra directly from unevenly spaced paleoclimatic time series

https://www.whoi.edu/cms/files/Fleitmann07_45483.pdf

Holocene ITCZ and Indian monsoon dynamics recorded in stalagmites from Oman and Yemen (Socotra)

Variations in the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth are thought to influence climate, but the extent of this influence on timescales of millennia to decades is unclear. A number of climate records show correlations between solar cycles and climate1, but the absolute changes in solar intensity over the range of decades to millennia are small2 and the influence of solar flux on climate is not well established. The formation of stalagmites in northern Oman has recorded past northward shifts of the intertropical convergence zone3, whose northward migration stops near the southern shoreline of Arabia in the present climate4. Here we present a high-resolution record of oxygen isotope variations, for the period from 9.6 to 6.1 kyr before present, in a Th–U-dated stalagmite from Oman. The δ18O record from the stalagmite, which serves as a proxy for variations in the tropical circulation and monsoon rainfall, allows us to make a direct comparison of the δ18O record with the Δ14C record from tree rings5, which largely reflects changes in solar activity6,7. The excellent correlation between the two records suggests that one of the primary controls on centennial- to decadal-scale changes in tropical rainfall and monsoon intensity during this time are variations in solar radiation.

Manfred Mudelsee

Papers

Holocene forcing of the Indian monsoon recorded in a stalagmite from southern Oman.

REDFIT: estimating red-noise spectra directly from unevenly spaced paleoclimatic time series

Holocene ITCZ and Indian monsoon dynamics recorded in stalagmites from Oman and Yemen (Socotra)

Strong coherence between solar variability and the monsoon in Oman between 9 and 6 kyr ago

Regional Climate Projections.