More is not always better: delta-downscaling climate model outputs from 30 to 5&thinsp;min resolution has minimal impact on coherence with Late Quaternary proxies

Timbrell, Lucy; Blinkhorn, James; Colucci, Margherita; Leonardi, Michela; Chevalier, Manuel; Pozzi, Andrea Vittorio; Grove, Matt; Scerri, Eleanor; Manica, Andrea

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-1185-2025

Articles | Volume 21, issue 7

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-1185-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Past vegetation dynamics and their role in past climate...

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-1185-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 7

Research article

|

10 Jul 2025

Research article |

| 10 Jul 2025

More is not always better: delta-downscaling climate model outputs from 30 to 5 min resolution has minimal impact on coherence with Late Quaternary proxies

Lucy Timbrell, James Blinkhorn, Margherita Colucci, Michela Leonardi, Manuel Chevalier, Andrea Vittorio Pozzi, Matt Grove, Eleanor Scerri, and Andrea Manica

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-1185-2025-supplement

Data sets

Global Beyer et al. (2020) and Huntley et al. (2022) model outputs at 5-arc minutes Timbrell, Lucy https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7828453

Model code and software

More is not always better: downscaling climate model outputs from 30 to 5-minute resolution has minimal impact on coherence with Late Quaternary proxies Timbrell, Lucy https://osf.io/duq3j/

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.