A global collection of paleoclimate proxy time series over the Common Era

*Nov 2022 Update: Please note that it has come to the author's attention that there are a number of duplicate proxy records in this database. The precise number is yet to be determined but is on the order of about 50. Until this has been corrected please use this database carefully, paying attention for possible duplicates, or in an abundance of caution do not use the current version of this database.*

This collection of paleoclimate proxy data currently includes 2591 tree ring chronologies, 197 coral and sclerosponge records, 153 ice core isotope records, 26 speleothem isotope records, 10 lake sediment records, and 1 marine sediment record, for a total of 2,978 records. The proxy records have been collected with a focus on the past 2000 years.

This dataset has been collated through collaborative efforts with the Last Millennium Reanalysis project (Hakim et al. 2016) and provides the basis for the reconstructions presented in Steiger et al. (2018). Though the majority of data records are culled from PAGES2k Consortium (2017) and Breitenmoser et al. (2014), some data was taken from the NOAA NCEI’s World Data Center for Paleoclimatology archive. Additionally, data was solicited from multiple investigators such as Eric Steig, Stephanie Hayman, Sylke Draschba, Henning Kuhnert, Andy Baker, and others amounting to approximately 60 coral, ice core, speleothem, and lake sediment datasets, though all files in this archive can be freely shared. Datasets were selected whose resolution was at least 25 years, temporal duration was greater than 40 years, and consisted of proxies that had established proxy system models (forward models). 

The data files are in Matlab format and the variables here include the proxy names (‘lmr2k_names’), the proxy data (‘lmr2k_data’), the proxy type (‘archive’), the proxy measurement (‘msrmt’), the proxy latitudes and longitudes (‘p_lat’ and ‘p_lon’), and the years of the proxies (‘year’). Seasonally resolved proxies have been averaged from April to the following calendar year March.

Updates will be made to this proxy collection as more proxy data become available.

Breitenmoser, P., et al. "Forward modelling of tree-ring width and comparison with a global network of tree-ring chronologies." Climate of the Past 10.2 (2014): 437.

PAGES2k Consortium. "A global multiproxy database for temperature reconstructions of the common era." Scientific Data 4, 170088 (2017).

Hakim, Gregory J., et al. "The last millennium climate reanalysis project: Framework and first results." Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 121.12 (2016): 6745-6764.

Steiger, N. J. et al. "A reconstruction of global hydroclimate and dynamical variables over the Common Era." Scientific Data 5:180086 (2018).