Articles | Volume 19, issue 5
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-1043-2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Special issue:
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-1043-2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| 
30 May 2023
Research article |
| 30 May 2023
| 30 May 2023
Refining data–data and data–model vegetation comparisons using the Earth mover's distance (EMD)
Institute of Geosciences, Sect. Meteorology, Rheinische
Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany
Institute of Earth Surface Dynamics, Géopolis, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
Anne Dallmeyer
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Bundesstraße 53, 20146 Hamburg, Germany
Nils Weitzel
Department of Geosciences, University of Tübingen, Schnarrenbergstr. 94–96, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
Institute of Environmental Physics, Heidelberg University, Im Neuenheimer Feld 229, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
Chenzhi Li
Polar Terrestrial Environmental Systems, Alfred Wegener Institute
Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Telegrafenberg A45, 14473
Potsdam, Germany
Institute of Environmental Science and Geography, University of Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24–25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany
Jean-Philippe Baudouin
Department of Geosciences, University of Tübingen, Schnarrenbergstr. 94–96, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
Institute of Environmental Physics, Heidelberg University, Im Neuenheimer Feld 229, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
Ulrike Herzschuh
Polar Terrestrial Environmental Systems, Alfred Wegener Institute
Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Telegrafenberg A45, 14473
Potsdam, Germany
Institute of Environmental Science and Geography, University of Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24–25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany
Institute of Biochemistry and Biology, University of Potsdam,
Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24–25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany
Xianyong Cao
Alpine Paleoecology and Human Adaptation Group (ALPHA), State Key
Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Resources and Environment
(TPESRE), Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100101 Beijing, China
Andreas Hense
Institute of Geosciences, Sect. Meteorology, Rheinische
Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany
Related authors
Lucy Timbrell, James Blinkhorn, Margherita Colucci, Michela Leonardi, Manuel Chevalier, Andrea Vittorio Pozzi, Matt Grove, Eleanor Scerri, and Andrea Manica
Clim. Past, 21, 1185–1208, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-1185-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-1185-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Scientists study past climate change using proxies (e.g. pollen) and models. Proxies offer detailed snapshots but are limited in number, while models provide broader coverage but at low resolution. Models are typically downscaled to 30 arcmin, but it is unclear if this is sufficient. We found that increasing models to 5 arcmin does not improve their coherence with climate reconstructed from pollen data. Optimal model resolution depends on research need, balancing detail with error.
Chenzhi Li, Anne Dallmeyer, Jian Ni, Manuel Chevalier, Matteo Willeit, Andrei A. Andreev, Xianyong Cao, Laura Schild, Birgit Heim, Mareike Wieczorek, and Ulrike Herzschuh
Clim. Past, 21, 1001–1024, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-1001-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-1001-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
We present global megabiome dynamics and distributions derived from pollen-based reconstructions over the last 21 000 years, which are suitable for the evaluation of Earth-system-model-based paleo-megabiome simulations. We identified strong deviations between pollen- and model-derived megabiome distributions in the circum-Arctic and Tibetan Plateau areas during the Last Glacial Maximum and early deglaciation and in northern Africa and the Mediterranean region during the Holocene.
Fabio Oriani, Gregoire Mariethoz, and Manuel Chevalier
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 731–742, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-731-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-731-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Modern and fossil pollen data contain precious information for reconstructing the climate and environment of the past. However, these data are only achieved for single locations with no continuity in space. We present here a systematic atlas of 194 digital maps containing the spatial estimation of contemporary pollen presence over Europe. This dataset constitutes a free and ready-to-use tool to study climate, biodiversity, and environment in time and space.
Ulrike Herzschuh, Thomas Böhmer, Manuel Chevalier, Raphaël Hébert, Anne Dallmeyer, Chenzhi Li, Xianyong Cao, Odile Peyron, Larisa Nazarova, Elena Y. Novenko, Jungjae Park, Natalia A. Rudaya, Frank Schlütz, Lyudmila S. Shumilovskikh, Pavel E. Tarasov, Yongbo Wang, Ruilin Wen, Qinghai Xu, and Zhuo Zheng
Clim. Past, 19, 1481–1506, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-1481-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-1481-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
A mismatch between model- and proxy-based Holocene climate change may partially originate from the poor spatial coverage of climate reconstructions. Here we investigate quantitative reconstructions of mean annual temperature and annual precipitation from 1908 pollen records in the Northern Hemisphere. Trends show strong latitudinal patterns and differ between (sub-)continents. Our work contributes to a better understanding of the global mean.
Ulrike Herzschuh, Thomas Böhmer, Chenzhi Li, Manuel Chevalier, Raphaël Hébert, Anne Dallmeyer, Xianyong Cao, Nancy H. Bigelow, Larisa Nazarova, Elena Y. Novenko, Jungjae Park, Odile Peyron, Natalia A. Rudaya, Frank Schlütz, Lyudmila S. Shumilovskikh, Pavel E. Tarasov, Yongbo Wang, Ruilin Wen, Qinghai Xu, and Zhuo Zheng
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 2235–2258, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2235-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2235-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
Climate reconstruction from proxy data can help evaluate climate models. We present pollen-based reconstructions of mean July temperature, mean annual temperature, and annual precipitation from 2594 pollen records from the Northern Hemisphere, using three reconstruction methods (WA-PLS, WA-PLS_tailored, and MAT). Since no global or hemispheric synthesis of quantitative precipitation changes are available for the Holocene so far, this dataset will be of great value to the geoscientific community.
Manuel Chevalier
Clim. Past, 18, 821–844, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-821-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-821-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
This paper introduces a new R package to perform quantitative climate reconstructions from palaeoecological datasets. The package includes calibration data for several commonly used terrestrial (e.g. pollen) and marine (e.g. foraminifers) climate proxies to enable its use in various environments globally. In addition, the built-in graphical diagnostic tools simplify the evaluation and interpretations of the results. No coding skills are required to use crestr.
Basil A. S. Davis, Manuel Chevalier, Philipp Sommer, Vachel A. Carter, Walter Finsinger, Achille Mauri, Leanne N. Phelps, Marco Zanon, Roman Abegglen, Christine M. Åkesson, Francisca Alba-Sánchez, R. Scott Anderson, Tatiana G. Antipina, Juliana R. Atanassova, Ruth Beer, Nina I. Belyanina, Tatiana A. Blyakharchuk, Olga K. Borisova, Elissaveta Bozilova, Galina Bukreeva, M. Jane Bunting, Eleonora Clò, Daniele Colombaroli, Nathalie Combourieu-Nebout, Stéphanie Desprat, Federico Di Rita, Morteza Djamali, Kevin J. Edwards, Patricia L. Fall, Angelica Feurdean, William Fletcher, Assunta Florenzano, Giulia Furlanetto, Emna Gaceur, Arsenii T. Galimov, Mariusz Gałka, Iria García-Moreiras, Thomas Giesecke, Roxana Grindean, Maria A. Guido, Irina G. Gvozdeva, Ulrike Herzschuh, Kari L. Hjelle, Sergey Ivanov, Susanne Jahns, Vlasta Jankovska, Gonzalo Jiménez-Moreno, Monika Karpińska-Kołaczek, Ikuko Kitaba, Piotr Kołaczek, Elena G. Lapteva, Małgorzata Latałowa, Vincent Lebreton, Suzanne Leroy, Michelle Leydet, Darya A. Lopatina, José Antonio López-Sáez, André F. Lotter, Donatella Magri, Elena Marinova, Isabelle Matthias, Anastasia Mavridou, Anna Maria Mercuri, Jose Manuel Mesa-Fernández, Yuri A. Mikishin, Krystyna Milecka, Carlo Montanari, César Morales-Molino, Almut Mrotzek, Castor Muñoz Sobrino, Olga D. Naidina, Takeshi Nakagawa, Anne Birgitte Nielsen, Elena Y. Novenko, Sampson Panajiotidis, Nata K. Panova, Maria Papadopoulou, Heather S. Pardoe, Anna Pędziszewska, Tatiana I. Petrenko, María J. Ramos-Román, Cesare Ravazzi, Manfred Rösch, Natalia Ryabogina, Silvia Sabariego Ruiz, J. Sakari Salonen, Tatyana V. Sapelko, James E. Schofield, Heikki Seppä, Lyudmila Shumilovskikh, Normunds Stivrins, Philipp Stojakowits, Helena Svobodova Svitavska, Joanna Święta-Musznicka, Ioan Tantau, Willy Tinner, Kazimierz Tobolski, Spassimir Tonkov, Margarita Tsakiridou, Verushka Valsecchi, Oksana G. Zanina, and Marcelina Zimny
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 2423–2445, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2423-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2423-2020, 2020
Short summary
Short summary
The Eurasian Modern Pollen Database (EMPD) contains pollen counts and associated metadata for 8134 modern pollen samples from across the Eurasian region. The EMPD is part of, and complementary to, the European Pollen Database (EPD) which contains data on fossil pollen found in Late Quaternary sedimentary archives. The purpose of the EMPD is to provide calibration datasets and other data to support palaeoecological research on past climates and vegetation cover over the Quaternary period.
Ingolf Kühn, Christian Hecht, Ulrike Herzschuh, and Dirk Scherler
Web Ecol., 25, 157–168, https://doi.org/10.5194/we-25-157-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/we-25-157-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Since 1850, glaciers have retreated in the Alps, providing ground for vegetation succession. Such systems were studied intensively in other parts of the Alps, but excluding the Northern Limestone Alps. Hence, we initiated a long-term research programme, which we introduce here. Initial findings show an increase in plant species richness and cover with age since deglaciation. This is, however, by far slower than observed elsewhere in the Alps, likely due to the specific geology and geomorphology.
Izabella A. Baisheva, Birgit Heim, Jorge García Molinos, Amelie Stieg, Hanno Meyer, Ramesh Glückler, Kathleen R. Stoof-Leichsenring, Antje Eulenburg, Pier Paul Overduin, Evgenii S. Zakharov, Aital V. Egorov, Paraskovya V. Davydova, Lena A. Ushnitskaya, Sardana N. Levina, Ruslan M. Gorodnichev, Robert Jackisch, Antonie Haas, Stefan Kruse, Luidmila A. Pestryakova, and Ulrike Herzschuh
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4114, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4114, 2025
This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Biogeosciences (BG).
Short summary
Short summary
Our study provides a new comprehensive assessment of the limnological state of 66 lakes in the Central Yakutian alaas landscapes and the Verkhoyansk mountain range. Our analyses suggest that specific lake-type properties within the thermokarst lake sequence seem to drive inorganic, organic, and isotopic lake hydrochemistry. Future warming may lead to less diversification within lake macrophyte assemblages in old alaas lakes.
Lucy Timbrell, James Blinkhorn, Margherita Colucci, Michela Leonardi, Manuel Chevalier, Andrea Vittorio Pozzi, Matt Grove, Eleanor Scerri, and Andrea Manica
Clim. Past, 21, 1185–1208, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-1185-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-1185-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Scientists study past climate change using proxies (e.g. pollen) and models. Proxies offer detailed snapshots but are limited in number, while models provide broader coverage but at low resolution. Models are typically downscaled to 30 arcmin, but it is unclear if this is sufficient. We found that increasing models to 5 arcmin does not improve their coherence with climate reconstructed from pollen data. Optimal model resolution depends on research need, balancing detail with error.
Fang Tian, Weiyu Cao, Xiaohan Liu, Zixin Liu, and Xianyong Cao
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-242, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-242, 2025
Revised manuscript under review for ESSD
Short summary
Short summary
We completed a modern pollen dataset obtained from 90 lakes from the Tibetan Plateau (TP), and integrated it with previous modern lacustrine pollen datasets. The comprehensive modern pollen dataset covers the full range of climatic gradients across the TP and all vegetation types. The modern pollen dataset has good predictive power in estimating net primary production and annual precipitation.
Lutz Schirrmeister, Margret C. Fuchs, Thomas Opel, Andrei Andreev, Frank Kienast, Andrea Schneider, Larisa Nazarova, Larisa Frolova, Svetlana Kuzmina, Tatiana Kuznetsova, Vladimir Tumskoy, Heidrun Matthes, Gerrit Lohmann, Guido Grosse, Viktor Kunitsky, Hanno Meyer, Heike H. Zimmermann, Ulrike Herzschuh, Thomas Böhmer, Stuart Umbo, Sevi Modestou, Sebastian F. M. Breitenbach, Anfisa Pismeniuk, Georg Schwamborn, Stephanie Kusch, and Sebastian Wetterich
Clim. Past, 21, 1143–1184, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-1143-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-1143-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Geochronological, cryolithological, paleoecological, and modeling data reconstruct the Last Interglacial (LIG) climate around the New Siberian Islands and reveal significantly warmer conditions compared to today. The critical challenges in predicting future ecosystem responses lie in the fact that the land–ocean distribution during the LIG was markedly different from today, affecting the degree of continentality, which played a major role in modulating climate and ecosystem dynamics.
Ulrike Herzschuh, Thomas Böhmer, Weihan Jia, and Simeon Lisovski
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2678, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2678, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
We introduce a new climate proxy based on plant DNA preserved in lake sediments. Validated with a large surface sample dataset and applied to a sediment record, this method provides more accurate and robust reconstructions of past climate change than traditional vegetation proxies like pollen, likely due to a higher taxonomic resolution and more localized signal.
Chenzhi Li, Anne Dallmeyer, Jian Ni, Manuel Chevalier, Matteo Willeit, Andrei A. Andreev, Xianyong Cao, Laura Schild, Birgit Heim, Mareike Wieczorek, and Ulrike Herzschuh
Clim. Past, 21, 1001–1024, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-1001-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-1001-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
We present global megabiome dynamics and distributions derived from pollen-based reconstructions over the last 21 000 years, which are suitable for the evaluation of Earth-system-model-based paleo-megabiome simulations. We identified strong deviations between pollen- and model-derived megabiome distributions in the circum-Arctic and Tibetan Plateau areas during the Last Glacial Maximum and early deglaciation and in northern Africa and the Mediterranean region during the Holocene.
Yana Savytska, Viktor Smolii, and Nils Weitzel
Earth Syst. Dynam., 16, 721–727, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-721-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-721-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
In recent decades, we have witnessed abnormally hot summers and frequent weather extremes globally. These are clear signs of global warming and climate change. A constant increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is a major driver of these changes. We propose an algorithm for near-real-time detection of terrestrial areas with CO2 sources and sinks. This algorithm could aid in developing new methods of natural CO2 reduction and exploring ecosystem responses to disturbances.
Amelie Stieg, Boris K. Biskaborn, Ulrike Herzschuh, Andreas Marent, Jens Strauss, Dorothee Wilhelms-Dick, Luidmila A. Pestryakova, and Hanno Meyer
Biogeosciences, 22, 2327–2350, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-2327-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-2327-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Globally, lake ecosystems have undergone significant shifts since the 1950s due to human activities. This study presents a unique ~220-year sediment record from a remote Siberian boreal lake, providing a multiproxy perspective on climate warming and anthropogenic air pollution. Analyses of diatom assemblages, diatom silicon isotopes, and carbon and nitrogen sediment proxies reveal complex biogeochemical interactions, highlighting anthropogenic influences even on remote water resources.
Laura Schild, Peter Ewald, Chenzhi Li, Raphaël Hébert, Thomas Laepple, and Ulrike Herzschuh
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 2007–2033, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-2007-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-2007-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
This study reconstructed vegetation and tree cover in the Northern Hemisphere from a harmonized dataset of pollen counts from sediment and peat cores for the past 14 000 years. A model was applied to correct for differences in pollen production between different plants, and modern remote-sensing forest cover was used to validate the reconstructed tree cover. Accurate data on past vegetation are invaluable for the investigation of vegetation–climate dynamics and the validation of vegetation models.
Simeon Lisovski, Alexandra Runge, Iuliia Shevtsova, Nele Landgraf, Anne Morgenstern, Ronald Reagan Okoth, Matthias Fuchs, Nikolay Lashchinskiy, Carl Stadie, Alison Beamish, Ulrike Herzschuh, Guido Grosse, and Birgit Heim
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 1707–1730, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-1707-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-1707-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
The Lena Delta is the largest river delta in the Arctic and represents a biodiversity hotspot. Here, we describe multiple field datasets and a detailed habitat classification map for the Lena Delta. We present context and methods of these openly available datasets and show how they can improve our understanding of the rapidly changing Arctic tundra system.
Elisa Ziegler, Nils Weitzel, Jean-Philippe Baudouin, Marie-Luise Kapsch, Uwe Mikolajewicz, Lauren Gregoire, Ruza Ivanovic, Paul J. Valdes, Christian Wirths, and Kira Rehfeld
Clim. Past, 21, 627–659, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-627-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-627-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
During the Last Deglaciation, global surface temperature rose by about 4–7 °C over several millennia. We show that changes in year-to-year up to century-to-century fluctuations of temperature and precipitation during the Deglaciation were mostly larger than during either the preceding or succeeding more stable periods in 15 climate model simulations. The analysis demonstrates how ice sheets, meltwater, and volcanism influence simulated variability to inform future simulation protocols.
Mengna Liao, Kai Li, Yili Jin, Lina Liu, Xianyong Cao, and Jian Ni
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-71, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-71, 2025
Revised manuscript under review for ESSD
Short summary
Short summary
We present a modern pollen dataset of 555 pollen count records from 307 sites on the Tibetan Plateau (28–40° N and 75–103° E). Our open-access dataset holds various potential applications in paleoecological and paleoclimatic researches. It offers a scientific foundation for reconstructing changes in climate and vegetation over time and enables the assessment of the reliability of pollen assemblages in representing the dynamics of vegetation cover, functional traits, and plant diversity.
Jean-Philippe Baudouin, Nils Weitzel, Maximilian May, Lukas Jonkers, Andrew M. Dolman, and Kira Rehfeld
Clim. Past, 21, 381–403, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-381-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-381-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Earth's past temperature reconstructions are critical for understanding climate change. We test the ability of these reconstructions using climate simulations. Uncertainties, mainly from past temperature measurement methods and age determination, impact reconstructions over time. While more data enhance accuracy for long-term trends, high-quality data are more important for short-term precision. Our study lays the groundwork for better reconstructions and suggests avenues for improvement.
Timon Netzel, Andrea Miebach, Thomas Litt, and Andreas Hense
Clim. Past, 21, 357–380, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-357-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-357-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
New probabilistic methods for local quantitative paleoclimate reconstructions are introduced within a Bayesian framework and applied to plant proxy data from Lake Kinneret (Israel). Recent climate data and arboreal pollen from the lake's sediment are added as predefined boundary conditions. The results provide a reconstruction of the mean December–February temperature and annual precipitation, along with their associated uncertainty ranges, in this region during the Holocene.
Kieran M. R. Hunt, Jean-Philippe Baudouin, Andrew G. Turner, A. P. Dimri, Ghulam Jeelani, Pooja, Rajib Chattopadhyay, Forest Cannon, T. Arulalan, M. S. Shekhar, T. P. Sabin, and Eliza Palazzi
Weather Clim. Dynam., 6, 43–112, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-43-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-6-43-2025, 2025
Short summary
Short summary
Western disturbances (WDs) are storms that predominantly affect north India and Pakistan during the winter months, where they play an important role in regional water security, but can also bring a range of natural hazards. In this review, we summarise recent literature across a range of topics: their structure and lifecycle, precipitation and impacts, interactions with large-scale weather patterns, representation in models, how well they are forecast, and their response to changes in climate.
Amelie Stieg, Boris K. Biskaborn, Ulrike Herzschuh, Jens Strauss, Luidmila Pestryakova, and Hanno Meyer
Clim. Past, 20, 909–933, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-20-909-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-20-909-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Siberia is impacted by recent climate warming and experiences extreme hydroclimate events. We present a 220-year-long sub-decadal stable oxygen isotope record of diatoms from Lake Khamra. Our analysis identifies winter precipitation as the key process impacting the isotope variability. Two possible hydroclimatic anomalies were found to coincide with significant changes in lake internal conditions and increased wildfire activity in the region.
Nils Weitzel, Heather Andres, Jean-Philippe Baudouin, Marie-Luise Kapsch, Uwe Mikolajewicz, Lukas Jonkers, Oliver Bothe, Elisa Ziegler, Thomas Kleinen, André Paul, and Kira Rehfeld
Clim. Past, 20, 865–890, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-20-865-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-20-865-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
The ability of climate models to faithfully reproduce past warming episodes is a valuable test considering potentially large future warming. We develop a new method to compare simulations of the last deglaciation with temperature reconstructions. We find that reconstructions differ more between regions than simulations, potentially due to deficiencies in the simulation design, models, or reconstructions. Our work is a promising step towards benchmarking simulations of past climate transitions.
Philip Meister, Anne Alexandre, Hannah Bailey, Philip Barker, Boris K. Biskaborn, Ellie Broadman, Rosine Cartier, Bernhard Chapligin, Martine Couapel, Jonathan R. Dean, Bernhard Diekmann, Poppy Harding, Andrew C. G. Henderson, Armand Hernandez, Ulrike Herzschuh, Svetlana S. Kostrova, Jack Lacey, Melanie J. Leng, Andreas Lücke, Anson W. Mackay, Eniko Katalin Magyari, Biljana Narancic, Cécile Porchier, Gunhild Rosqvist, Aldo Shemesh, Corinne Sonzogni, George E. A. Swann, Florence Sylvestre, and Hanno Meyer
Clim. Past, 20, 363–392, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-20-363-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-20-363-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
This paper presents the first comprehensive compilation of diatom oxygen isotope records in lake sediments (δ18OBSi), supported by lake basin parameters. We infer the spatial and temporal coverage of δ18OBSi records and discuss common hemispheric trends on centennial and millennial timescales. Key results are common patterns for hydrologically open lakes in Northern Hemisphere extratropical regions during the Holocene corresponding to known climatic epochs, i.e. the Holocene Thermal Maximum.
Xiaohuan Hou, Nannan Wang, Zhe Sun, Kan Yuan, Xianyong Cao, and Juzhi Hou
Clim. Past, 20, 335–348, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-20-335-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-20-335-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
We present an ice-free season temperature based on brGDGTs over last 15 kyr on the eastern Tibetan Plateau (TP). The result shows that Holocene Thermal Maximum occurred during 8–3.5 ka, which lags behind pollen-based temperature recorded in same core, indicating a significant seasonal bias between different proxies. We also investigated previously published brGDGT-based temperatures on the TP to determine the pattern of Holocene temperature changes and possible reasons for the diverse records.
Fabio Oriani, Gregoire Mariethoz, and Manuel Chevalier
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 731–742, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-731-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-731-2024, 2024
Short summary
Short summary
Modern and fossil pollen data contain precious information for reconstructing the climate and environment of the past. However, these data are only achieved for single locations with no continuity in space. We present here a systematic atlas of 194 digital maps containing the spatial estimation of contemporary pollen presence over Europe. This dataset constitutes a free and ready-to-use tool to study climate, biodiversity, and environment in time and space.
Anne Dallmeyer, Anneli Poska, Laurent Marquer, Andrea Seim, and Marie-José Gaillard
Clim. Past, 19, 1531–1557, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-1531-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-1531-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
We compare past tree cover changes in Europe during the last 8000 years simulated with two dynamic global vegetation models and inferred from pollen data. The major model–data mismatch is related to the much earlier onset of anthropogenic deforestation in the data compared to the prescribed land use in the models. We show that land use, and not climate, is the main driver of the Holocene forest decline. The model–data agreement depends on the model tuning, challenging model–data comparisons.
Ulrike Herzschuh, Thomas Böhmer, Manuel Chevalier, Raphaël Hébert, Anne Dallmeyer, Chenzhi Li, Xianyong Cao, Odile Peyron, Larisa Nazarova, Elena Y. Novenko, Jungjae Park, Natalia A. Rudaya, Frank Schlütz, Lyudmila S. Shumilovskikh, Pavel E. Tarasov, Yongbo Wang, Ruilin Wen, Qinghai Xu, and Zhuo Zheng
Clim. Past, 19, 1481–1506, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-1481-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-1481-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
A mismatch between model- and proxy-based Holocene climate change may partially originate from the poor spatial coverage of climate reconstructions. Here we investigate quantitative reconstructions of mean annual temperature and annual precipitation from 1908 pollen records in the Northern Hemisphere. Trends show strong latitudinal patterns and differ between (sub-)continents. Our work contributes to a better understanding of the global mean.
Ulrike Herzschuh, Thomas Böhmer, Chenzhi Li, Manuel Chevalier, Raphaël Hébert, Anne Dallmeyer, Xianyong Cao, Nancy H. Bigelow, Larisa Nazarova, Elena Y. Novenko, Jungjae Park, Odile Peyron, Natalia A. Rudaya, Frank Schlütz, Lyudmila S. Shumilovskikh, Pavel E. Tarasov, Yongbo Wang, Ruilin Wen, Qinghai Xu, and Zhuo Zheng
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 2235–2258, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2235-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2235-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
Climate reconstruction from proxy data can help evaluate climate models. We present pollen-based reconstructions of mean July temperature, mean annual temperature, and annual precipitation from 2594 pollen records from the Northern Hemisphere, using three reconstruction methods (WA-PLS, WA-PLS_tailored, and MAT). Since no global or hemispheric synthesis of quantitative precipitation changes are available for the Holocene so far, this dataset will be of great value to the geoscientific community.
Boris K. Biskaborn, Amy Forster, Gregor Pfalz, Lyudmila A. Pestryakova, Kathleen Stoof-Leichsenring, Jens Strauss, Tim Kröger, and Ulrike Herzschuh
Biogeosciences, 20, 1691–1712, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-20-1691-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-20-1691-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
Lake sediment from the Russian Arctic was studied for microalgae and organic matter chemistry dated back to the last glacial 28 000 years. Species and chemistry responded to environmental changes such as the Younger Dryas cold event and the Holocene thermal maximum. Organic carbon accumulation correlated with rates of microalgae deposition only during warm episodes but not during the cold glacial.
Furong Li, Marie-José Gaillard, Xianyong Cao, Ulrike Herzschuh, Shinya Sugita, Jian Ni, Yan Zhao, Chengbang An, Xiaozhong Huang, Yu Li, Hongyan Liu, Aizhi Sun, and Yifeng Yao
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 95–112, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-95-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-95-2023, 2023
Short summary
Short summary
The objective of this study is present the first gridded and temporally continuous quantitative plant-cover reconstruction for temperate and northern subtropical China over the last 12 millennia. The reconstructions are based on 94 pollen records and include estimates for 27 plant taxa, 10 plant functional types, and 3 land-cover types. The dataset is suitable for palaeoclimate modelling and the evaluation of simulated past vegetation cover and anthropogenic land-cover change from models.
Timon Miesner, Ulrike Herzschuh, Luidmila A. Pestryakova, Mareike Wieczorek, Evgenii S. Zakharov, Alexei I. Kolmogorov, Paraskovya V. Davydova, and Stefan Kruse
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 14, 5695–5716, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-5695-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-5695-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
We present data which were collected on expeditions to the northeast of the Russian Federation. One table describes the 226 locations we visited during those expeditions, and the other describes 40 289 trees which we recorded at these locations. We found out that important information on the forest cannot be predicted precisely from satellites. Thus, for anyone interested in distant forests, it is important to go to there and take measurements or use data (as presented here).
Femke van Geffen, Birgit Heim, Frederic Brieger, Rongwei Geng, Iuliia A. Shevtsova, Luise Schulte, Simone M. Stuenzi, Nadine Bernhardt, Elena I. Troeva, Luidmila A. Pestryakova, Evgenii S. Zakharov, Bringfried Pflug, Ulrike Herzschuh, and Stefan Kruse
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 14, 4967–4994, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-4967-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-4967-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
SiDroForest is an attempt to remedy data scarcity regarding vegetation data in the circumpolar region, whilst providing adjusted and labeled data for machine learning and upscaling practices. SiDroForest contains four datasets that include SfM point clouds, individually labeled trees, synthetic tree crowns and labeled Sentinel-2 patches that provide insights into the vegetation composition and forest structure of two important vegetation transition zones in Siberia, Russia.
Nannan Wang, Lina Liu, Xiaohuan Hou, Yanrong Zhang, Haicheng Wei, and Xianyong Cao
Clim. Past, 18, 2381–2399, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-2381-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-2381-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
We reconstructed the vegetation and climate change since the last 14.2 ka BP from a fossil pollen record together with multiple proxies (grain size, contents of total organic carbon and total nitrogen) on the northeast Tibetan Plateau. The results reveal that an arid climate occurs in the early Holocene and the vegetation could be disturbed by human activities to some extent after ca. 0.24 ka BP (1710 CE).
Ulrike Herzschuh, Chenzhi Li, Thomas Böhmer, Alexander K. Postl, Birgit Heim, Andrei A. Andreev, Xianyong Cao, Mareike Wieczorek, and Jian Ni
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 14, 3213–3227, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-3213-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-3213-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
Pollen preserved in environmental archives such as lake sediments and bogs are extensively used for reconstructions of past vegetation and climate. Here we present LegacyPollen 1.0, a dataset of 2831 fossil pollen records from all over the globe that were collected from publicly available databases. We harmonized the names of the pollen taxa so that all datasets can be jointly investigated. LegacyPollen 1.0 is available as an open-access dataset.
Ramesh Glückler, Rongwei Geng, Lennart Grimm, Izabella Baisheva, Ulrike Herzschuh, Kathleen R. Stoof-Leichsenring, Stefan Kruse, Andrei Andreev, Luidmila Pestryakova, and Elisabeth Dietze
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2022-395, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2022-395, 2022
Preprint archived
Short summary
Short summary
Despite rapidly intensifying wildfire seasons in Siberian boreal forests, little is known about long-term relationships between changes in vegetation and shifts in wildfire activity. Using lake sediment proxies, we reconstruct such environmental changes over the past 10,800 years in Central Yakutia. We find that a more open forest may facilitate increased amounts of vegetation burning. The present-day dense larch forest might yet be mediating the current climate-driven wildfire intensification.
Manuel Chevalier
Clim. Past, 18, 821–844, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-821-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-821-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
This paper introduces a new R package to perform quantitative climate reconstructions from palaeoecological datasets. The package includes calibration data for several commonly used terrestrial (e.g. pollen) and marine (e.g. foraminifers) climate proxies to enable its use in various environments globally. In addition, the built-in graphical diagnostic tools simplify the evaluation and interpretations of the results. No coding skills are required to use crestr.
Chenzhi Li, Alexander K. Postl, Thomas Böhmer, Xianyong Cao, Andrew M. Dolman, and Ulrike Herzschuh
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 14, 1331–1343, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-1331-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-1331-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
Here we present a global chronology framework of 2831 palynological records, including globally harmonized chronologies covering up to 273 000 years. A comparison with the original chronologies reveals a major improvement according to our assessment. Our chronology framework and revised chronologies will interest a broad geoscientific community, as it provides the opportunity to make use in synthesis studies of, for example, pollen-based vegetation and climate change.
Stefan Kruse, Simone M. Stuenzi, Julia Boike, Moritz Langer, Josias Gloy, and Ulrike Herzschuh
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 2395–2422, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2395-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2395-2022, 2022
Short summary
Short summary
We coupled established models for boreal forest (LAVESI) and permafrost dynamics (CryoGrid) in Siberia to investigate interactions of the diverse vegetation layer with permafrost soils. Our tests showed improved active layer depth estimations and newly included species growth according to their species-specific limits. We conclude that the new model system can be applied to simulate boreal forest dynamics and transitions under global warming and disturbances, expanding our knowledge.
Jean-Philippe Baudouin, Michael Herzog, and Cameron A. Petrie
Weather Clim. Dynam., 2, 1187–1207, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-2-1187-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-2-1187-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
Western disturbances are mid-latitude, high-altitude, low-pressure areas that bring orographic precipitation into the Upper Indus Basin. Using statistical tools, we show that the interaction between western disturbances and relief explains the near-surface, cross-barrier wind activity. We also reveal the existence of a moisture pathway from the nearby seas. Overall, we offer a conceptual framework for western-disturbance activity, particularly in terms of precipitation.
Anne Dallmeyer, Martin Claussen, Stephan J. Lorenz, Michael Sigl, Matthew Toohey, and Ulrike Herzschuh
Clim. Past, 17, 2481–2513, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-2481-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-2481-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
Using the comprehensive Earth system model, MPI-ESM1.2, we explore the global Holocene vegetation changes and interpret them in terms of the Holocene climate change. The model results reveal that most of the Holocene vegetation transitions seen outside the high northern latitudes can be attributed to modifications in the intensity of the global summer monsoons.
Stuart A. Vyse, Ulrike Herzschuh, Gregor Pfalz, Lyudmila A. Pestryakova, Bernhard Diekmann, Norbert Nowaczyk, and Boris K. Biskaborn
Biogeosciences, 18, 4791–4816, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-4791-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-4791-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
Lakes act as important stores of organic carbon and inorganic sediment material. This study provides a first investigation into carbon and sediment accumulation and storage within an Arctic glacial lake from Far East Russia. It shows that major shifts are related to palaeoclimate variation that affects the development of the lake and its surrounding catchment. Spatial differences to other lake systems from other regions may reflect variability in processes controlled by latitude and altitude.
Xianyong Cao, Fang Tian, Kai Li, Jian Ni, Xiaoshan Yu, Lina Liu, and Nannan Wang
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 13, 3525–3537, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-3525-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-3525-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
The Tibetan Plateau is quite remote, and it is difficult to collect samples on it; the previous modern pollen data are located on a nearby road, and there is a large geographic gap in the eastern and central Tibetan Plateau. Our novel pollen data can fill the gap and will be valuable in establishing a complete dataset covering the entire Tibetan Plateau, thus helping us to get a comprehensive understanding. In addition, the dataset can also be used to investigate plant species distribution.
Ramesh Glückler, Ulrike Herzschuh, Stefan Kruse, Andrei Andreev, Stuart Andrew Vyse, Bettina Winkler, Boris K. Biskaborn, Luidmila Pestryakova, and Elisabeth Dietze
Biogeosciences, 18, 4185–4209, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-4185-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-4185-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
Data about past fire activity are very sparse in Siberia. This study presents a first high-resolution record of charcoal particles from lake sediments in boreal eastern Siberia. It indicates that current levels of charcoal accumulation are not unprecedented. While a recent increase in reconstructed fire frequency coincides with rising temperatures and increasing human activity, vegetation composition does not seem to be a major driver behind changes in the fire regime in the past two millennia.
Lydia Stolpmann, Caroline Coch, Anne Morgenstern, Julia Boike, Michael Fritz, Ulrike Herzschuh, Kathleen Stoof-Leichsenring, Yury Dvornikov, Birgit Heim, Josefine Lenz, Amy Larsen, Katey Walter Anthony, Benjamin Jones, Karen Frey, and Guido Grosse
Biogeosciences, 18, 3917–3936, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-3917-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-3917-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
Our new database summarizes DOC concentrations of 2167 water samples from 1833 lakes in permafrost regions across the Arctic to provide insights into linkages between DOC and environment. We found increasing lake DOC concentration with decreasing permafrost extent and higher DOC concentrations in boreal permafrost sites compared to tundra sites. Our study shows that DOC concentration depends on the environmental properties of a lake, especially permafrost extent, ecoregion, and vegetation.
Iuliia Shevtsova, Ulrike Herzschuh, Birgit Heim, Luise Schulte, Simone Stünzi, Luidmila A. Pestryakova, Evgeniy S. Zakharov, and Stefan Kruse
Biogeosciences, 18, 3343–3366, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-3343-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-3343-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
In the light of climate changes in subarctic regions, notable general increase in above-ground biomass for the past 15 years (2000 to 2017) was estimated along a tundra–taiga gradient of central Chukotka (Russian Far East). The greatest increase occurred in the northern taiga in the areas of larch closed-canopy forest expansion with Cajander larch as a main contributor. For the estimations, we used field data (taxa-separated plant biomass, 2018) and upscaled it based on Landsat satellite data.
Simone Maria Stuenzi, Julia Boike, William Cable, Ulrike Herzschuh, Stefan Kruse, Luidmila A. Pestryakova, Thomas Schneider von Deimling, Sebastian Westermann, Evgenii S. Zakharov, and Moritz Langer
Biogeosciences, 18, 343–365, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-343-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-343-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
Boreal forests in eastern Siberia are an essential component of global climate patterns. We use a physically based model and field measurements to study the interactions between forests, permanently frozen ground and the atmosphere. We find that forests exert a strong control on the thermal state of permafrost through changing snow cover dynamics and altering the surface energy balance, through absorbing most of the incoming solar radiation and suppressing below-canopy turbulent fluxes.
Mareike Wieczorek and Ulrike Herzschuh
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 3515–3528, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-3515-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-3515-2020, 2020
Short summary
Short summary
Relative pollen productivity (RPP) estimates are used to estimate vegetation cover from pollen records. This study provides (i) a compilation of northern hemispheric RPP studies, allowing researchers to identify suitable sets for their study region and to identify data gaps for future research, and (ii) taxonomically harmonized, unified RPP sets for China, Europe, North America, and the whole Northern Hemisphere, generated from the available studies.
Basil A. S. Davis, Manuel Chevalier, Philipp Sommer, Vachel A. Carter, Walter Finsinger, Achille Mauri, Leanne N. Phelps, Marco Zanon, Roman Abegglen, Christine M. Åkesson, Francisca Alba-Sánchez, R. Scott Anderson, Tatiana G. Antipina, Juliana R. Atanassova, Ruth Beer, Nina I. Belyanina, Tatiana A. Blyakharchuk, Olga K. Borisova, Elissaveta Bozilova, Galina Bukreeva, M. Jane Bunting, Eleonora Clò, Daniele Colombaroli, Nathalie Combourieu-Nebout, Stéphanie Desprat, Federico Di Rita, Morteza Djamali, Kevin J. Edwards, Patricia L. Fall, Angelica Feurdean, William Fletcher, Assunta Florenzano, Giulia Furlanetto, Emna Gaceur, Arsenii T. Galimov, Mariusz Gałka, Iria García-Moreiras, Thomas Giesecke, Roxana Grindean, Maria A. Guido, Irina G. Gvozdeva, Ulrike Herzschuh, Kari L. Hjelle, Sergey Ivanov, Susanne Jahns, Vlasta Jankovska, Gonzalo Jiménez-Moreno, Monika Karpińska-Kołaczek, Ikuko Kitaba, Piotr Kołaczek, Elena G. Lapteva, Małgorzata Latałowa, Vincent Lebreton, Suzanne Leroy, Michelle Leydet, Darya A. Lopatina, José Antonio López-Sáez, André F. Lotter, Donatella Magri, Elena Marinova, Isabelle Matthias, Anastasia Mavridou, Anna Maria Mercuri, Jose Manuel Mesa-Fernández, Yuri A. Mikishin, Krystyna Milecka, Carlo Montanari, César Morales-Molino, Almut Mrotzek, Castor Muñoz Sobrino, Olga D. Naidina, Takeshi Nakagawa, Anne Birgitte Nielsen, Elena Y. Novenko, Sampson Panajiotidis, Nata K. Panova, Maria Papadopoulou, Heather S. Pardoe, Anna Pędziszewska, Tatiana I. Petrenko, María J. Ramos-Román, Cesare Ravazzi, Manfred Rösch, Natalia Ryabogina, Silvia Sabariego Ruiz, J. Sakari Salonen, Tatyana V. Sapelko, James E. Schofield, Heikki Seppä, Lyudmila Shumilovskikh, Normunds Stivrins, Philipp Stojakowits, Helena Svobodova Svitavska, Joanna Święta-Musznicka, Ioan Tantau, Willy Tinner, Kazimierz Tobolski, Spassimir Tonkov, Margarita Tsakiridou, Verushka Valsecchi, Oksana G. Zanina, and Marcelina Zimny
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 12, 2423–2445, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2423-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-2423-2020, 2020
Short summary
Short summary
The Eurasian Modern Pollen Database (EMPD) contains pollen counts and associated metadata for 8134 modern pollen samples from across the Eurasian region. The EMPD is part of, and complementary to, the European Pollen Database (EPD) which contains data on fossil pollen found in Late Quaternary sedimentary archives. The purpose of the EMPD is to provide calibration datasets and other data to support palaeoecological research on past climates and vegetation cover over the Quaternary period.
Rita Glowienka-Hense, Andreas Hense, Sebastian Brune, and Johanna Baehr
Adv. Stat. Clim. Meteorol. Oceanogr., 6, 103–113, https://doi.org/10.5194/ascmo-6-103-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/ascmo-6-103-2020, 2020
Short summary
Short summary
A new method for weather and climate forecast model evaluation with respect to observations is proposed. Individually added values are estimated for each model, together with shared information both models provide equally on the observations. Finally, shared model information, which is not present in the observations, is calculated. The method is applied to two examples from climate and weather forecasting, showing new perspectives for model evaluation.
Cited articles
Allen, J. R. M., Hickler, T., Singarayer, J. S., Sykes, M. T., Valdes, P. J., and Huntley, B.: Last glacial vegetation of northern Eurasia, Quaternary Sci. Rev., 29, 2604–2618, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2010.05.031, 2010.
Allen, J. R. M., Forrest, M., Hickler, T., Singarayer, J. S., Valdes, P. J.,
and Huntley, B.: Global vegetation patterns of the past 140,000 years, J.
Biogeogr., 47, 2073–2090, https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.13930, 2020.
Altman, D. G.: Practical statistics for medical research, CRC Press, ISBN 0412276305, 1990.
Bigelow, N. H., Brubaker, L. B., Edwards, M. E., Harrison, S. P., Prentice, I. C., Anderson, P. M., Andreev, A. A., Bartlein, P. J., Christensen, T. R.,
Cramer, W., Kaplan, J. O., Lozhkin, A. V., Matveyeva, N. V., Murray, D. F.,
McGuire, A. D., Razzhivin, V. Y., Ritchie, J. C., Smith, B., Walker, D. A.,
Gajewski, K., Wolf, V., Holmqvist, B. H., Igarashi, Y., Kremenetskii, K.,
Paus, A., Pisaric, M. F. J., and Volkova, V. S.: Climate change and Arctic
ecosystems: 1. Vegetation changes north of 55∘ N between the last
glacial maximum, mid-Holocene, and present, J. Geophys. Res.-Atmos., 108, D19, https://doi.org/10.1029/2002jd002558, 2003.
Binney, H. A., Willis, K. J., Edwards, M. E., Bhagwat, S. A., Anderson, P.
M., Andreev, A. A., Blaauw, M., Damblon, F., Haesaerts, P., Kienast, F.,
Kremenetski, K. V., Krivonogov, S. K., Lozhkin, A. V., MacDonald, G. M., Novenko, E. Y., Oksanen, P., Sapelko, T. V., Väliranta, M., and Vazhenina, L.: The distribution of late-Quaternary woody taxa in northern Eurasia: evidence from a new macrofossil database, Quaternary Sci. Rev., 28, 2445–2464, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2009.04.016, 2009.
Binney, H. A., Edwards, M. E., Macias-Fauria, M., Lozhkin, A., Anderson, P.,
Kaplan, J. O., Andreev, A. A., Bezrukova, E., Blyakharchuk, T. A., Jankovska, V., Khazina, I., Krivonogov, S., Kremenetski, K. V., Nield, J., Novenko, E. Yu., Ryabogina, N., Solovieva, N., Willis, K. J., Zernitskaya, V. P., and Jankovská, V.: Vegetation of Eurasia from the last glacial maximum to present: Key biogeographic patterns, Quaternary Sci. Rev., 157, 80–97, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2016.11.022, 2017.
Birks, H. J. B., Heiri, O., Seppä, H., and Bjune, A. E.: Strengths and
weaknesses of quantitative climate reconstructions based on Late-Quaternary
biological proxies, Open Ecol. J., 3, 68–110, https://doi.org/10.2174/1874213001003020068, 2010.
Brovkin, V., Raddatz, T., Reick, C. H., Claussen, M., and Gayler, V.: Global
biogeophysical interactions between forest and climate, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L07405, https://doi.org/10.1029/2009GL037543, 2009.
Cao, X., Tian, F., Dallmeyer, A., and Herzschuh, U.: Northern Hemisphere biome changes (>30∘ N) since 40 cal ka BP and their driving
factors inferred from model-data comparisons, Quaternary Sci. Rev., 220, 291–309, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.07.034, 2019.
Chevalier, M.: paleotools: a collection of statistical techniques to analyse palaeodata (v1.0.0), Zenodo [code], https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7889631, 2023.
Chevalier, M., Davis, B. A. S., Heiri, O., Seppä, H., Chase, B. M., Gajewski, K., Lacourse, T., Telford, R. J., Finsinger, W., Guiot, J., Kühl, N., Maezumi, S. Y., Tipton, J. R., Carter, V. A., Brussel, T., Phelps, L. N., Dawson, A., Zanon, M., Vallé, F., Nolan, C., Mauri, A.,
de Vernal, A., Izumi, K., Holmström, L., Marsicek, J., Goring, S. J., Sommer, P. S., Chaput, M., and Kupriyanov, D.: Pollen-based climate reconstruction techniques for late Quaternary studies, Earth-Sci. Rev., 210, 103384, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2020.103384, 2020.
Cohen, J.: A Coefficient of Agreement for Nominal Scales, Educ. Psycholog. Meas., 20, 37–46, https://doi.org/10.1177/001316446002000104, 1960.
Dallmeyer, A., Claussen, M., Ni, J., Cao, X., Wang, Y., Fischer, N., Pfeiffer, M., Jin, L., Khon, V., Wagner, S., Haberkorn, K., and Herzschuh,
U.: Biome changes in Asia since the mid-Holocene – An analysis of different
transient Earth system model simulations, Clim. Past, 13, 107–134,
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-13-107-2017, 2017.
Dowsett, H., Dolan, A., Rowley, D., Moucha, R., Forte, A. M., Mitrovica, J.
X., Pound, M., Salzmann, U., Robinson, M., Chandler, M., Foley, K., and Haywood, A.: The PRISM4 (mid-Piacenzian) paleoenvironmental reconstruction,
Clim. Past, 12, 1519–1538, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-12-1519-2016, 2016.
Efron, B. and Tibshirani, R. J.: An introduction to the bootstrap, in: Monographs on statistics and applied probability, Vol. 57, CRC Press, ISBN 0412042312, 1994.
Finsinger, W. and Tinner, W.: Holocene vegetation and land-use changes in
response to climatic changes in the forelands of the southwestern Alps, Italy, J. Quaternary Sci., 21, 243–258, https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.971, 2006.
Finsinger, W., Lane, C. S., van Den Brand, G. J., Wagner-Cremer, F., Blockley, S. P. E., and Lotter, A. F.: The lateglacial Quercus expansion in
the southern European Alps: Rapid vegetation response to a late Allerød
climate warming?, J. Quaternary Sci., 26, 694–702, https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.1493, 2011.
Githumbi, E., Fyfe, R., Gaillard, M., Trondman, A., Mazier, F., Nielsen, A.-B., Poska, A., Sugita, S., Woodbridge, J., Azuara, J., Feurdean, A.,
Grindean, R., Lebreton, V., Marquer, L., Nebout-Combourieu, N., Stančikaitė, M., Tanţău, I., Tonkov, S., and Shumilovskikh,
L.: European pollen-based REVEALS land-cover reconstructions for the Holocene: methodology, mapping and potentials, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 14, 1581–1619, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-1581-2022, 2022.
Hargreaves, C. J., Dyer, M. S., Gaultois, M. W., Kurlin, V. A., and Rosseinsky, M. J.: The Earth Mover's Distance as a Metric for the Space of
Inorganic Compositions, Chem. Mater., 32, 10610–10620, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.0c03381, 2020.
Harris, I., Jones, P. D., Osborn, T. J., and Lister, D. H.: Updated high-resolution grids of monthly climatic observations – the CRU TS3.10
Dataset, Int. J. Climatol., 34, 623–642, https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.3711, 2014.
Henrot, A.-J., Utescher, T., Erdei, B., Dury, M., Hamon, N., Ramstein, G.,
Krapp, M., Herold, N., Goldner, A., Favre, E., Munhoven, G., and François, L.: Middle Miocene climate and vegetation models and their
validation with proxy data, Palaeogeogr. Palaeoclim. Palaeoecol., 467, 95–119, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2016.05.026, 2017.
Huntley, B., Alfano, M. J., Allen, J. R. M., Pollard, D., Tzedakis, P. C.,
de Beaulieu, J.-L., Grüger, E., and Watts, B.: European vegetation
during Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage-3, Quatern. Res., 59, 195–212,
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0033-5894(02)00016-9, 2003.
Kaplan, J. O.: Geophysical Applications of Vegetation Modeling, Department of Ecology, Lund University, Lund, 132 pp., 2001.
Kaplan, J. O., Bigelow, N. H., Prentice, I. C., Harrison, S. P., Bartlein,
P. J., Christensen, T. R., Cramer, W., Matveyeva, N. V., McGuire, A. D.,
Murray, D. F., Razzhivin, V. Y., Smith, B., Walker, D. A., Anderson, P. M.,
Andreev, A. A., Brubaker, L. B., Edwards, M. E., and Lozhkin, A. V.: Climate
change and Arctic ecosystems: 2. Modeling, paleodata-model comparisons, and
future projections, J. Geophys. Res.-Atmos., 108, 8171, https://doi.org/10.1029/2002jd002559, 2003.
Landis, J. R. and Koch, G. G.: The Measurement of Observer Agreement for
Categorical Data, Biometrics, 33, 159–174, https://doi.org/10.2307/2529310, 1977.
Levina, E. and Bickel, P.: The Earth Mover's distance is the Mallows distance: Some insights from statistics, in: Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision, 2, 7–14 July 2001, Vancouver, Canada, 251–256, https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCV.2001.937632, 2001.
Marchant, R. A., Cleef, A., Harrison, S. P., Hooghiemstra, H., Markgraf, V.,
van Boxel, J., Ager, T., Almeida, L., Anderson, R., Baied, C., Behling, H.,
Berrio, J. C., Burbridge, R., Björck, S., Byrne, R., Bush, M. B.,
Duivenvoorden, J., Flenley, J. R., De Oliveira, P., Van Geel, B., Graf, K.,
Gosling, W. D., Harbele, S., van der Hammen, T., Hansen, B., Horn, S.,
Kuhry, P., Ledru, M.-P., Mayle, F. E., Leyden, B., Lozano-García, S.,
Melief, A. M., Moreno, P. I., Moar, N. T., Prieto, A., van Reenen, G.,
Salgado-Labouriau, M. L., Schäbitz, F., Schreve-Brinkman, E. J., and Wille, M.: Pollen-based biome reconstructions for Latin America at 0, 6000 and 18 000 radiocarbon years ago, Clim. Past, 5, 725–767,
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-5-725-2009, 2009.
Marquer, L., Gaillard, M.-J., Sugita, S., Poska, A., Trondman, A.-K., Mazier, F., Nielsen, A. B., Fyfe, R. M., Jönsson, A. M., Smith, B., Kaplan, J. O., Alenius, T., Birks, H. J. B., Bjune, A. E., Christiansen, J., Dodson, J., Edwards, K. J., Giesecke, T., Herzschuh, U., Kangur, M., Koff, T., Latałowa, M., Lechterbeck, J., Olofsson, J., and Seppä, H.: Quantifying the effects of land use and climate on Holocene vegetation in
Europe, Quaternary Sci. Rev., 171, 20–37, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2017.07.001, 2017.
Marsland, S. J., Haak, H., Jungclaus, J. H., Latif, M., and Röske, F.: The Max-Planck-Institute global ocean/sea ice model with orthogonal curvilinear coordinates, Ocean Model., 5, 91–127, https://doi.org/10.1016/S1463-5003(02)00015-X, 2003.
Orlova, D. Y., Zimmerman, N., Meehan, S., Meehan, C., Waters, J., Ghosn, E.
E. B., Filatenkov, A., Kolyagin, G. A., Gernez, Y., Tsuda, S., Moore, W.,
Moss, R. B., Herzenberg, L. A., and Walther, G.: Earth Mover's Distance (EMD): A true metric for comparing biomarker expression levels in cell populations, PLoS ONE, 11, 1–14, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0151859, 2016.
Overpeck, J. T., Webb III, T., and Prentice, I. C.: Quantitative interpretation of fossil pollen spectra: Dissimilarity coefficients and the
method of modern analogs, Quatern. Res., 23, 87–108,
https://doi.org/10.1016/0033-5894(85)90074-2, 1985.
Prentice, I. C. and Webb III, T.: BIOME 6000: reconstructing global
mid-Holocene vegetation patterns from palaeoecological records, J. Biogeogr., 25, 997–1005, 1998.
Prentice, I. C., Guiot, J., Huntley, B., Jolly, D., and Cheddadi, R.:
Reconstructing biomes from palaeoecological data: A general method and its
application to European pollen data at 0 and 6 ka, Clim. Dynam., 12, 185–194, https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00211617, 1996.
Prentice, I. C., Harrison, S. P., Jolly, D., and Guiot, J.: The climate and
biomes of Europe at 6000 yr BP: Comparison of model simulations and
pollen-based reconstructions, Quaternary Sci. Rev., 17, 659–668,
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-3791(98)00016-X, 1998.
Prentice, I. C., Jolly, D., and Participants, B.: Mid-Holocene and glacial maximum vegetation geography of the northern continents and Africa, J. Biogeogr., 27, 507–519, https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2699.2000.00425.x, 2000.
R Core Team: R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing, R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria, https://www.R-project.org/ (last access: February 2023), 2022.
Roeckner, E., Bäuml, G., Bonaventura, L., Brokopf, R., Esch, M.,
Giorgetta, M. A., Hagemann, S., Kirchner, I., Kornblueh, L., Rhodin, A.,
Schlese, U., Schulzweida, U., and Tompkins, A.: The atmospheric general
circulation model ECHAM5: Part 1: Model description, Report, MPI für
Meteorologie, 349, 1–140, https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_995269/component/file_3192562/content (last access: February 2023), 2003.
Rubner, Y., Tomasi, C., and Guibas, L. J.: Earth mover's distance as a metric for image retrieval, Int. J. Comput. Vis., 50, 99–121, https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026543900054, 2000.
Sato, H., Kelley, D. I., Mayor, S. J., Martin Calvo, M., Cowling, S. A., and
Prentice, I. C.: Dry corridors opened by fire and low CO2 in Amazonian
rainforest during the Last Glacial Maximum, Nat. Geosci., 14, 578–585,
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00777-2, 2021.
Sawada, M., Viau, A. E., Vettoretti, G., Peltier, W. R., and Gajewski, K.:
Comparison of North-American pollen-based temperature and global lake-status
with CCCma AGCM2 output at 6 ka, Quaternary Sci. Rev., 23, 225–244,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2003.08.005, 2004.
Simpson, G. L.: Analogue Methods in Palaeoecology: Using the analogue Package, J. Stat. Softw., 22, 1–29, https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v022.i02, 2007.
Sugita, S.: Theory of quantitative reconstruction of vegetation I: pollen
from large sites REVEALS regional vegetation composition, Holocene, 17, 229–241, https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683607075837, 2007.
Tian, F., Cao, X., Dallmeyer, A., Lohmann, G., Zhang, X., Ni, J., Andreev,
A., Anderson, P. M., Lozhkin, A. V., Bezrukova, E., Rudaya, N., Xu, Q., and
Herzschuh, U.: Biome changes and their inferred climatic drivers in northern
and eastern continental Asia at selected times since 40 cal ka bp,
Veg. Hist. Archaeobot., 27, 365–379, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-017-0653-8, 2018.
Urbanek, S. and Rubner, Y.: emdist: Earth Mover's Distance v0.3-2, GitHub [code], https://github.com/s-u/emdist (last access: February 2023), 2022.
Wei, W. and Lohmann, G.: Simulated Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation during
the Holocene, J. Climate, 25, 6989–7002, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00667.1, 2012.
Wei, W., Lohmann, G., and Dima, M.: Distinct Modes of Internal Variability
in the Global Meridional Overturning Circulation Associated with the Southern Hemisphere Westerly Winds, J. Phys. Oceanogr., 42, 785–801, https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-11-038.1, 2012.
Wickham, H., Hester, J., and Chang, W.: devtools: Tools to Make Developing R Packages Easier, R package version 2.3.2, https://devtools.r-lib.org (last access: February 2023), 2020.
Wohlfahrt, J., Harrison, S. P., Braconnot, P., Hewitt, C. D., Kitoh, A.,
Mikolajewicz, U., Otto-Bliesner, B. L., and Weber, S. L.: Evaluation of
coupled ocean-atmosphere simulations of the mid-Holocene using palaeovegetation data from the northern hemisphere extratropics, Clim.
Dynam., 31, 871–890, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-008-0415-5, 2008.
Zhang, X., Lohmann, G., Knorr, G., and Xu, X.: Different ocean states and
transient characteristics in last glacial maximum simulations and implications for deglaciation, Clim. Past, 9, 2319–2333, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-9-2319-2013, 2013.
Short summary
Data–data and data–model vegetation comparisons are commonly based on comparing single vegetation estimates. While this approach generates good results on average, reducing pollen assemblages to single single plant functional type (PFT) or biome estimates can oversimplify the vegetation signal. We propose using a multivariate metric, the Earth mover's distance (EMD), to include more details about the vegetation structure when performing such comparisons.
Data–data and data–model vegetation comparisons are commonly based on comparing single...
