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Reconstruction of the Northern Hemisphere temperature from 1500 to 1949 by optimal regional averaging method

  • Article
  • Atmospheric Science
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Chinese Science Bulletin

Abstract

The rareness and inhomogeneity of the data points cause difficulties in the reconstruction of past average temperature. Optimal regional averaging is a method that can overcome these difficulties and obtain the average temperature of target area by means of optimal weights using limited temperature data. In this paper, the average temperature in the Northern Hemisphere is calculated by the optimal regional averaging method using two types of data: temperature data from Climatic Research Unit from 1901 to 2000 and maximum latewood density dataset of tree from 1500 to 1949. Five, ten, fifteen data points from CRU and forty data points from MXD are used in our research. The results show that even with the relatively less data used in this reconstruction, the method allows the reconstruction of the average temperature of the Northern Hemisphere more accurately, which provides the temperature information for palaeoclimate reconstruction.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2010CB950104), and the Innovative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11121202).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Mechanics on Disaster and Environment in Western China, Ministry of Education, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Cong Wang, Ning Huang & Jing Guo

  2. School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Dianji University, Shanghai, 200000, China

    Cong Wang

  3. Key Laboratory of Desert and Desertification, Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Ning Huang & Bao Yang

Authors
  1. Cong Wang
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  2. Ning Huang
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  3. Jing Guo
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  4. Bao Yang
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Ning Huang or Bao Yang.

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Wang, C., Huang, N., Guo, J. et al. Reconstruction of the Northern Hemisphere temperature from 1500 to 1949 by optimal regional averaging method. Chin. Sci. Bull. 59, 4873–4880 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0580-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0580-3

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