Clim Dyn (2015) 44:75–93
DOI 10.1007/s00382-014-2348-5
Eight-hundred years of summer temperature variations in the
southeast of the Iberian Peninsula reconstructed from tree rings
Isabel Dorado Liñán · Eduardo Zorita · Jesús Fidel González-Rouco · Ingo Heinrich ·
Filipe Campello · Elena Muntán · Laia Andreu-Hayles · Emilia Gutiérrez
Received: 28 April 2013 / Accepted: 17 September 2014 / Published online: 2 October 2014
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014
Abstract July-to-October temperature variations are
reconstructed for the last 800 years based on tree-ring widths
from the Cazorla Range. Annual tree-ring width at this site
has been found to be negatively correlated with temperature
of the previous summer. This relationship is genuine, metabolically plausible, and cannot be explained as an indirect
correlation mediated by hydroclimate. The resulting reconstruction (NCZTjaso) represents the southernmost annually
resolved temperature record based on tree-rings in Europe
and provides detailed information on the regional climate
evolution during the Late Holocene in the southeast of the
Iberian Peninsula. The tree-ring based temperature reconstruction of Cazorla Range reveals predominantly warm
summer temperatures during the transition between the
Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) and the Little Ice Age
(LIA) from the 13th to the mid of the sixteenth century.
The LIA spanned a slightly longer time (1500–1930 CE)
than in other European summer temperature reconstructions
from the Alps and Pyrenees. The twentieth century, though
warmer than the preceding centuries, does not show unprecedented warmth in the last 800 years. Three ensembles of
climate simulations conducted with two global atmosphere–
ocean general circulation climate models (GCMs), considering different external forcings, were used for comparison:
ECHO-G (Erik) and MPI-ESM (E1 and E2). Additionally,
individual simulations were available from GCM included in
the fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, as well as
single-forcing simulations performed with MPI-ESM. The
comparison of the reconstructed and simulated temperatures
revealed a close agreement of NCZTjaso with the simulations
performed with total solar irradiance forcing with wider
amplitude. Furthermore, the correlations with single-forcing
simulations suggest volcanism as the main factor controlling
preindustrial summer temperature variations in the Cazorla
Range over the last five centuries. The persistent anti-correlation between NCZTjaso and simulated temperatures during the MCA–LIA transitional period underlines the current
I. Dorado Liñán (*)
Chair of Ecoclimatology, Technische Universität München,
Munich, Germany
e-mail: dorado@wzw.tum.de
F. Campello
Departamento de Ciências da Vida, Centro de Ecologia
Funcional, Universidad de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal
E. Zorita
Institute for Coastal Research, Helmholtz-Zentrum-Geesthacht,
Geesthacht, Germany
J. F. González-Rouco
Departamento de Física de la Tierra, Astronomía y Astrofísica II,
Instituto de Geociencias UCM-CSIC, Universidad Complutense
de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
E. Muntán · E. Gutiérrez
Departament d’Ecologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona,
Spain
L. Andreu-Hayles
Tree-Ring Laboratory, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
of Columbia University, Palisades, NY, USA
I. Heinrich
German Centre for Geosciences, Climate Dynamics
and Landscape Evolution, Helmholtz Centre Potsdam,
Potsdam, Germany
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limitations for attributing temperature variations during that
period to internal variability or external forcing.
Keywords Dendroclimatology · Temperature
reconstruction · Climate models · External forcing ·
Cazorla Range
1 Introduction
Climate reconstructions based on different palaeo-proxy
records such as lake and ocean sediments, ice cores, corals, tree-rings, borehole profiles and documentary sources
have identified consistent periods of widespread higher (the
Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA); Stine 1994) and lower
(Little Ice Age (LIA); Lamb 1977) temperatures during the
last millennium (Mann et al. 1998, 2009). However, the
absolute magnitude, duration and spatial variation of these
anomalous periods still remain to a large extent uncertain.
On one hand, empirical reconstructions disagree somewhat
on the level of warming/cooling during the MCA and the
LIA, partly due to the uncertainties associated with every
proxy record (for a detailed review see Jones et al. 2009).
On the other hand, existing palaeorecords are sparse so
that to infer regional patterns and duration of climate variations over the past millennium is still difficult. In fact, some
studies have pointed out a possible non-global signature of
these periods (Jones and Mann 2004). Furthermore, the climate anomalies over some periods remain largely uncertain
since mayor discrepancies exist within and between climate
simulations and proxy based reconstructions (e.g., temperatures on the MCA-LIA transition; González-Rouco et al.
2011; Fernández-Donado et al. 2013).
The limited availability of proxy data also hampers the
understanding of the role of internal variability and the
regional response of the system to external forcing (e.g.,
increase in concentration of greenhouse gases, land use
changes). Natural external forcing such as solar irradiance
variations and volcanic activity have been highlighted as
the main global driving mechanisms of natural climate variability on multidecadal to centennial time-scales during the
Holocene (Briffa et al. 1998; Crowley 2000; van Geel et al.
1999). However, the amplitude of the reconstructed variations in total solar irradiance (TSI) over the last centuries
is still debated. Initially, the simulations performed with
General Circulation Models (GCM) used a reconstructed
TSI close to the reconstruction used by Crowley (2000). A
later reconstruction of TSI describes a much smaller amplitude (Krivova et al. 2007), whereas one recent study supports much wider amplitude of past solar variations (Shapiro et al. 2011). The forcing uncertainties are even larger
at regional and local scales. Some anthropogenic forcings
such as land cover changes (LCC) may play an opposite
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I. Dorado Liñán et al.
role when considering different spatial scales (Pongratz
et al. 2010) and the understanding of some factors such as
aerosols are targets still to be addressed at regional scales.
Increasing the availability of highly resolved millennium-long proxy based climate reconstructions will help
to better characterize spatial and temporally past climate
variations. The ongoing and forthcoming palaeo climate
research is called to focus on local and regional scales,
especially in areas currently under-represented in terms of
proxy based climate reconstructions, to overcome the current need of a finer spatial resolution. The Mediterranean
region offers a scattered variety of millennial-long reconstructions based on different proxy records (for a review
see Luterbacher et al. 2012). However, there are evident
geographical gaps that need to be closed. One of these
under-represented areas is the Iberian Peninsula (IP, hereafter), where periods such as MCA and LIA have barely
been identified due to the lack of palaeo-records to infer
the timing, duration and spatial variation of temperature
anomalies. Several proxy sources with different temporal
resolutions have been used to produce series of climatic
variables in the IP and, as an uncommon feature, the reconstruction of hydroclimatic variables is more widespread
than the reconstruction of past temperature variations
(Luterbacher et al. 2004). This is partly due to the extended
usage of environmental proxy records encoding moisture
signals such as lake sediments (Corella et al. 2010; Julià
et al. 1998; Martín-Puertas et al. 2010; Morellón et al.
2012; Moreno et al. 2008; Pla and Catalan 2004; Riera
et al. 2004; Romero-Viana et al. 2011) or speleothems (i.e.,
Jiménez de Cisneros et al. 2003; Martín-Chivelet et al.
2011; Moreno et al. 2010).
Similarly, documentary proxy records from this region
are strongly biased to hydroclimatic variations and/or
extremes (Alcoforado et al. 2000; Barriendos 1997; Barriendos and Rodrigo 2006; Domínguez-Castro et al. 2008,
2010; Rodrigo and Barriendos 2008; Rodrigo et al. 1999;
Vicente-Serrano and Cuadrat-Prats 2006) because precipitation is responsible for the two main climatic extremes
largely affecting population and societies: floods and severe
droughts. The existing publications based on documentary
sources describing past temperature variations in the IP are
restricted to the second half of the millennium and cover
periods of a couple of decades (Bullón 2008; Rodrigo et al.
1998) or 150 years at most (Rodrigo et al. 2012). Documentary sources would be very valuable as proxies for the
assessment of past temperature information since they are
one of the few proxy records providing highly resolved
information. However, almost no existing documentary
sources describe past temperatures prior to the sixteenth
century (Bullón 2008). Thus, the perspective of extending these records further back in time is not possible without using other highly resolved proxies (e.g. tree rings).
Southeast of the Iberian Peninsula
However, so far only two multi-centennial tree-ring based
reconstructions are available in the IP and both are located
in the Pyrenees, northern Spain: Büntgen et al. (2008)
developed a maximum summer temperature reconstruction based on maximum latewood density records (MXD)
from three sites; and Dorado Liñán et al. (2012) developed
a mean summer temperature reconstruction based on 11
MXD records, including those from Büntgen et al. (2008).
A new highly resolved temperature reconstruction covering the last millennium located in the south of the IP would
be highly desirable as recently highlighted by Luterbacher
et al. (2012).
In recent years, the efforts to overcome the lack of
tree-ring based climate reconstructions in the IP are being
strengthened and a number of studies showed chronologies and sites in Central (Génova 2012) and Southern IP
(Dorado Liñán et al. 2013) with skills to be used as palaeoproxies. In Dorado Liñán et al. (2013), the authors showed
the potential of tree-ring width from the Cazorla Range to
reconstruct summer-to-autumn temperatures. Such a reconstruction will represent the southernmost annually resolved
temperature reconstruction based on tree rings in Europe.
As a continuation of the research carried out by Dorado
Liñán et al. (2013), this work aims at: (1) contributing to
the body of knowledge on temperature variations during
the last millennium in the IP by producing a temperature
reconstruction based on tree rings from the Cazorla Range,
in the southeast IP; (2) assessing the latitudinal variations
in timing and duration of climate episodes such as LIA by
comparing with other highly resolved European temperature reconstructions; (3) identifying the main drivers of
temperature variations at the southeast of the IP by comparing the reconstructed temperatures with temperatures simulated by available ensembles of GCMs considering different external forcings including those from the CMIP5.
2 Materials and methods
2.1 Study site
Samples were taken at two adjacent sites named Puertollano and Cabañas located at the Natural Park of Sierra
de Cazorla, Segura y las Villas (Cazorla Range hereafter;
37°48′N, 02°57′W; 1800 m.a.s.l.; Fig. 1). The area is under
Oromediterranean humid climate type (Rivas-Martínez
1983) and due to its geographical position is exposed to the
influence of the temperate zone of middle latitudes as well
as to certain tropical influences (Martín-Vide and LopezBustins 2006). The winters at the Cazorla Range are very
cold with absolute minimum temperatures that can be far
below 0 °C and often with considerable snowfall. During
summers, maximum air temperatures can reach extremes of
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over 40 °C. Mean precipitation is exceptionally heavy and
places the territory in one of the highest rainfall zones in
Spain surrounded by typical low-moist areas from southeast of the IP (Heywood 1961). This high precipitation is
due to the contribution of moist air masses coming from the
Atlantic Sea (through the Guadalquivir Valley) and from
the Mediterranean Sea (through the Guadix-Baza Depression) leading to a mean total annual precipitation of over
800 mm, which increases with altitude while mean air temperatures decrease. Moisture is available throughout the
year except for a dry period in July–August but with occasional summer thunderstorms and fogs that may appear any
time of the year (Creus Novau 1998).
Pinus nigra subsp. salzmannii (Dunal) Franco (P. nigra,
hereafter) is the most widespread tree species in the territory, growing on several soil types and moisture regimes,
ideally with moderate humidity. P. nigra is able to endure
drought and extreme cold and harsh winters, because of
this it is able to grow at high elevation areas (1800–2000 m
a.s.l.) where only a thin soil layer is covering the bedrock
consisting of limestone-dolomite.
2.2 Chronology development, calibration
and reconstruction
A total of 89 samples were taken from 40 living trees with
an increment borer from P. nigra individuals. According
to standard procedures, cores were visually cross-dated
(Stokes and Smiley 1968), tree-ring widths (TRWs) measured and quality and correct dating of the resulting series
checked with the COFECHA software (Holmes 1983). To
remove tree-age related growth trends and preserve interannual and decadal-to-centennial climate signals (Cook and
Kairiukstis 1990; Fritts 1976), each individual series was
detrended by fitting a negative exponential or a linear function, using TurboArstan (Cook 1999). The residuals were
calculated as ratios to homogenise the variance along the
series. Non-autoregressive modelling was applied and the
final site chronology of TRWs was generated using a biweight robust mean to reduce the bias caused by extreme
values (Cook and Kairiukstis 1990; Fritts 1976). Common
variance and signal strength of TRW was calculated using
inter-series correlation (Rbar) and the Expressed Population Signal (EPS) (Wigley et al. 1984) to ensure reliability
and representativeness of the final chronology. The period
comprised between 1195 and 2006CE was found to be reliable as EPS is above 0.85 (Fig. 2).
As described in Dorado Liñán et al. (2013), station climate data were obtained from the network of the national
weather service. Mean monthly temperatures were derived
from the data recorded at Pontones (38°01′N; 2°52′W) and
from precipitation data from Nava de San Pedro (37°52′N;
2°53′W). The climate records were updated and now the
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I. Dorado Liñán et al.
Fig. 1 Location of Cazorla
Range (green dot). As an example, the black dashed box represents the domain defined by the
coordinates of the four outputs
taken from the ECHO-G
simulations. Arrows correspond
to the wind direction and speed
during July–October period
derived from NCEP/NCAR
reanalysis surface data for the
period 1948–2012
Fig. 2 Chronology from
Cazorla Range. a Final standard
tree-ring width chronology; b
number of series; c Expressed
Population Signal (EPS) along
the chronology. The red vertical line represents the cut-off
point when EPS drops below
the theoretical 0.85 threshold
(horizontal red dashed line)
temperature record covers the period 1904–2004 CE while
the precipitation series covers the period 1912–2004CE.
The most limiting factor for tree growth in this area is
July to October temperature (Tjaso) of the previous year
(Fig. 3). This pattern of climate-growth relationship, with
a dominant negative influence of previous summer-autumn
temperature, has been previously described at the same
area and for the same species by other authors (Andreu
et al. 2007; Creus Novau 1998; Dorado Liñán et al. 2011;
Linares and Tíscar 2010; Martín-Benito et al. 2007).
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The climate signal found in the Cazorla Range is consistently different to that described from trees growing in the Alps
and Pyrenees. In temperate mountain forests such as those in
the Pyrenees and the Alps, moisture is usually available to the
trees throughout the year and tree growth is mainly controlled
by temperatures. Warm temperatures trigger cell division and
differentiation in the stems and determine the length of the
growing season. Thus, tree-growth in temperate environments
is usually favoured by warm temperatures during the growing
season (Büntgen et al. 2011; Dorado Liñán et al. 2012).
Southeast of the Iberian Peninsula
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Fig. 3 Climate-tree-ring-growth relationships at Cazorla Range. a
Monthly correlation coefficients between tree-ring width and temperature (orange bars) and precipitation (blue bars) for the period
spanning from June of the previous year (t-1; in capital letters) to
December of the current year (t). The significant seasonal correlation
(Tjaso) is also shown. Dashed and pointed lines represent 95 and 99 %
significance level, respectively. b Field correlations of tree-ring width
and previous year Tjaso using the CRU-TS3 gridded temperature data.
Performed using KNMI Climate Explorer (Oldenborgh et al. 2004)
At the Cazorla Range, the climate-growth relationships
are more complex since temperatures do not only mark
the beginning and the end of the growing season but also
limit the photosynthetic activity during summer. Under
non-limiting moisture conditions, high summer temperatures, which can be reached at the Cazorla Range, enhance
vapour pressure deficit and promote a strategic stomata closure in order to reduce transpiration rates. The interruption
of the photosynthetic activity reduces the productivity of
the tree and thus limits the amount of carbohydrates that
can be stored and which are needed for next year’s growth.
The portion of the tree ring produced during spring (earlywood) strongly relies on the previous year stored carbohydrates and because of that reason, conditions during
the previous growing season may be more limiting for
tree-growth than conditions during the current growing
season (Fritts 1976). In this concrete case, tree growth at
the Cazorla Range exhibits a strong lagged dependence
on July-to-October temperature of the previous year since
the temperatures during that period will determine the
metabolic reserves available for growth of the current year
(Dorado Liñán et al. 2013).
Calibration/verification between the TRW and instrumental Tjaso was performed for the period 1904–2004 CE
using the split period method. The instrumental record was
divided into two periods: 1904–1954 and 1955–2004 CE.
For each period, the tree-ring data were regressed against
the instrumental temperature record and the model derived
was used to predict the second half of the split instrumental record. Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r), reduction of
error (RE; Cook et al. 1994) and coefficient of efficiency
(CE) were calculated for each of the two periods to test the
validity of the model derived from the regression (Fig. 4).
Given the validity of the two models developed during the
calibration-verification test, a model for the the whole length
of the calibration period (1904–2004) was developed and
used to calculate the final Tjaso reconstruction (NCZTjaso,
hereafter). A residuals analysis was carried out including a
Durbin-Watson tests to check for autocorrelation, Shapiro–
Wilk test for normality and trend anlysis. NCZTjaso was compared to other two well-known temperature reconstructions:
Pyrenees (Dorado Liñán et al. 2012) and Alps (Büntgen et al.
2011). Furthermore, a Superposed Epoch Analysis (SEA;
Panofsky and Brier 1958) method was performed using DplR
(Bunn 2008) in all three sites to isolate the common volcanic
signal in the records. The estimation of the significances for
the departures from the mean of the signal identified by SEA,
was tested using bootstrap resampling. This approach has
been widely used in studies of the volcanic effect on climate
(i.e., Fischer et al. 2007; D’Arrigo et al. 2009). The volcanic
events chosen for the analysis were those used by Gao et al.
(2008) for testing the sets of extraction criteria of Total Sulfate Deposition. They are post-1800 eruptions and include
seven volcanic eruptions: 1809 (Unknown), 1815 (Tambora),
1831 (Unknown), 1835 (Cosigüina), 1883 (Krakatau); 1912
(Katmai); 1991 (Pinatubo).
2.3 Climate simulations
Simulated July-to-October temperatures over the last millennium were obtained from different GCM simulations.
On one hand, two global atmosphere–ocean climate models
with different submodel components and driven by different external forcing: the ECHO-G (Legutke and Voss 1999)
and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology Earth System Model (MPI-ESM; Jungclaus et al. 2010), provided
ensembles of simulations. On the other hand, six GCMs
included in the CMIP5 provided one simulation per model.
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I. Dorado Liñán et al.
Fig. 4 July to October temperature reconstruction at the
Cazorla Range (NCZTjaso).
a Calibration-verification test
of the inverse tree-ring width
chronology (black line) and the
instrumental Tjaso record (red
line). The bottom panel displays
the low-pass filtered series
(20-year moving average).
Correlations (r) and reduction
of error (RE) and coefficient of
efficiency (CE) for the two split
periods (1904–1954 and 1955–
2004 CE) are also shown. b
Shapiro–Wilk residuals normality test (SW); c Durbin-Watson
test for residuals autocorrelation
(DW) and p value for the linear
trend analysis (Ps);
d Annual and 10-year smoothed
NCZTjaso (thin and tick black
lines, respectively) and the corresponding annual confidence
intervals defined as RMSD
(grey lines). Superimposed is
the 10-year smoothed instrumental record (red line)
The ECHO-G consists of the ECHAM4 atmospheric
component and the HOPE-G ocean model. ECHAM4 is
used with a T30 horizontal resolution (ca. 3.75 lat × long)
and HOPE-G with a horizontal resolution of approximately
2.8 lat × lon. The model runs were driven by three external
forcings: TSI and the radiative effect of stratospheric volcanic aerosols (both adapted from Crowley 2000) and the
concentrations of greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4 and N2O)
provided by Etheridge et al. (1996, 1998) and Battle et al.
(1996).
The ensemble of ECHO-G simulations used on this
work consists of two simulations: Erik1 and Erik2. Both
simulations were produced by driving the model with the
described estimations of natural and anthropogenic forcing
during the last millennium but starting from different initial
conditions. Erik1 started from a warmer state than Erik2.
For a more detailed description of the model, simulations
and the external forcing applied, the reader is referred to
Zorita et al. (2005) and González-Rouco et al. (2006,
2009).
The MPI-ESM is an atmosphere–ocean model which
includes also a fully interactive carbon cycle (Jungclaus
et al. 2010). MPI-ESM consists of the GCM of the atmosphere ECHAM5 (Roeckner et al. 2003), the ocean MPIOM
(Marsland et al. 2003) and the carbon cycle model including the ocean biogeochemistry module HAMOCC5 (Wetzel et al. 2006) and the land surface scheme JSBACH
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(Raddatz et al. 2007), which interactively computed the
atmospheric concentrations of CO2. ECHAM5 was run at
T31 resolution while MPIOM had a horizontal meridionally varying resolution ranging from 22 to 350 km.
The present work used two ensembles of MPI-ESM simulations from Jungclaus et al. (2010): E1 and E2. E1 is a fivemember ensemble of simulations performed with identical
external forcing but different initial conditions in 800CE. The
external forcings applied include: TSI with a small amplitude of variations (Krivova and Solanki 2008), volcanic forcing (Crowley et al. 2008), LCC (Pongratz et al. 2008), orbital
forcing (based on Bretagnon and Francou 1988) and aerosol
forcing (Lefohn et al. 1999; Boucher and Pham 2002). E2 is
a three-member ensemble performed with identical external
forcing as E1 except of a TSI reconstruction with wider variation amplitude (Lean 2000). Additionally, the present work
makes use of the MPI-ESM simulations performed with just
one external forcing at a time, in order to identify the sensitivity of the reconstructed temperature to each of the external
climate drivers. For the simulation performed just with volcanism as external forcing, a SEA was carried out in order to
assess the effect of volcanic eruptions in the simulated temperate and compare the results to those obtained for the treering based temperature reconstructions. For more detailed
information about the MPI-ESM model, the external forcing
prescribed and the ensembles of simulations E1 and E2, the
reader is referred to Jungclaus et al. (2010).
Southeast of the Iberian Peninsula
Simulated temperatures over the past millennium were
also available from some of the CMPI5 model suite: Beijing Climate Center (bcc-csm1-1; BCC hereafter); NASAGoddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS-E2-R; GISS
hereafter); National Center for Atmospheric Research
(CCSM4); Institute Pierre-Simon Laplace (IPSL-CM5ALR; IPSL hereafter) and Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie (MPI-ESM; MPI hereafter). All the millennium
paleo-simulations carried out in the frame of the CMIP5
were forced with a range of recommended external forcings described in detail in Schmidt et al. (2012). The
choices adopted by the modelling groups include orbital
forcing, LCC, variations in greenhouse levels, two different
volcanic reconstructions (Gao et al. 2008; or Crowley et al.
2008) and six different TSI curves. The particular external
forcings applied in the different simulations used in this
paper and other technical details can be found in the Chapter 5 of the final draft of the 5th Assessment Report of the
IPCC (http://www.climatechange2013.org/).
For comparison with the NCZTjaso, the data for the four
grid points closest to the location of the reconstruction
from every simulation was obtained. As an example, the
four grid points of the ECHO-G grid are highlighted by a
black box in Fig. 1. For each simulation, a representative
mean series was generated by averaging their respective
four grid-temperature points. In order to highlight decadal
to interdecadal variations and similarities, reconstructed
and simulated temperature series were expressed as anomalies with respect to the reference period 1900–1990 CE and
smoothed with a 40-year centred moving average.
3 Results
3.1 July to October temperature reconstruction
NCZTjaso describes 800 years of summer-to-autumn temperature variations in the south of the IP with a maximum
amplitude at interannual timescales, ranging from −2 °C to
+1.9 °C, both extremes reached during the first half of the
thirteenth century (Fig. 4).
Due to the lack of a common agreement on the definitions and duration of MCA, MCA–LIA transition (when
considered) and LIA, the definitions adopted in NCZTjaso
were done with the aim of assisting later comparisons with
other publications. Thus, the period 1200–1500 CE was
defined here as MCA–LIA transitional period according to
most of the existing publications. This period was predominately warm, with some alternative periods of low temperatures at the beginning of the thirteenth century (lowest temperature reached −2 °C), and a prolonged period
of low temperatures spanning 1350–1430 CE reaching a
lowest seasonal temperature of −1.6 °C around 1380CE.
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The MCA–LIA transitional period displayed the warmest
season of +1.9 °C in the middle of the thirteenth century
and several warm decades especially during the first half of
the fourteenth century and the full fifteenth century, reaching a maximum during the first half of the Spörer minimum
(1460–1550 CE).
The LIA is well marked at NCZTjaso and the cold period
spans 1500–1930 CE with only one positive anomaly
between 1760 and 1800 CE reaching a maximum temperature of +1.4 °C. The coldest period was during the
1500–1550 CE which coincides with the second half of the
Spörer solar minimum, while the minimum seasonal temperature was reached at the beginning of the seventeenth
century. A prominent cold period also occurred during the
Dalton solar minimum (1800–1860 CE) but not during the
Maunder solar minimum (1645–1715 CE).
The end of the LIA was followed by an increase in temperatures between 1925 and 1975CE, reaching a seasonal
maximum of +1.3 °C in the middle of the twentieth century. The most recent decades in the proxy record (1975–
2003 CE) have not been the warmest of the record, and the
mean temperature stayed slightly below the long-term average, attaining a seasonal minimum of −1.4 °C.
The temperature variability during LIA was generally
low, especially during 1550–1760CE, compared to the
MCA–LIA transition when variability was much higher.
More specifically, seasonal temperature anomalies ranged
from −1.8 to +1.0 °C during 1550–1760 CE and from −2
to +1.9 °C during the MCA–LIA. The difference becomes
more evident when comparing decadal anomalies: from
−0.7 to +0.3 °C and from −1.1 to +1.7 °C, respectively.
When exploring the similarities among different European summer temperature reconstructions based on tree
rings at annual scales (Fig. 5, bottom panel), the differences
with increasing distance are evident. NCZTjaso and Pyrenees
significantly correlate during most of the period of comparison, pointing to an agreement on the annual frequency.
On the other hand, the agreement between NCZTjaso and the
reconstruction from the Alps is restricted to some particular
periods such as the Dalton solar minimum. At decadal to
centennial time scales (Fig. 5, upper panel) some marked
differences in amplitude among the different summer
temperature reconstructions are marked. The temperature
reconstruction from the Alps (Büntgen et al. 2011) consistently displays larger changes (from −1.4 to +0.8 °C) than
the one from the Pyrenees (Dorado Liñán et al. 2012) (from
−0.4 to +0.2 °C) and NCZTjaso (from −0.6 to +0.4 °C).
Likewise, the timing of the maximum and minimum temperature anomalies was different. The reconstruction from
the Alps and Pyrenees reached their minimum values during
the Dalton Minimum while both display the maximum values during the twentieth century. On the contrary, NCZTjaso
shows the maximum temperatures at the beginning of the
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I. Dorado Liñán et al.
Fig. 5 Upper panel: Variations of summer temperatures
in a Western Europe latitudinal
gradient, including tree-ring
based reconstructions from the
Alps, Pyrenees and NCZTjaso.
All series are anomalies with
respect to the 1900–1990 mean
and smoothed with a 40-year
centred moving average.
Periods of solar minima are
highlighted: WM Wolf minimum; SM Spörer Minimum;
MM Maunder Minimum and
DM Dalton Minimum. Shaded
areas indicate the MCA-LIA
transitional period (yellow) and
LIA (grey). Note the different
anomaly scales. Bottom panel:
200 years running correlations
between NCZTjaso with the
summer temperature reconstructions from the Alps (dark blue)
and Pyrenees (light blue). Grey
dashed and dotted lines mark
95 and 99 % significant level,
respectively
fourteenth century and the minimum during the first half of
the sixteenth century.
NCZTjaso shows a similar pattern of anomalies between
1580 and 2004CE, albeit with consistent anti-correlations
with the temperature reconstructions from the Alps and
Pyrenees during the period 1200–1580 CE (Fig. 5). This
anticorrelation mainly occurs during the MCA–LIA transition. Also, the timing and duration of the LIA is different. Whereas during the Wolf minimum the reconstruction from the Alps shows a maximum in temperatures,
NCZTjaso displays a minimum. Similarly, the negative
(positive) anomaly spanning from 1350 to 1420 CE (1420–
1500 CE) in NCZTjaso, is a period of a positive (negative)
anomaly at the Alps and persistent positive anomaly at the
Pyrenees. The LIA started in NCZTjaso around 1500 CE
with the corresponding decrease in temperatures, while at
the Alps and Pyrenees temperatures were predominantly
warm until 1558 and 1640CE, respectively.
The three reconstructions show clear below-average temperatures along a period that can be categorized as the LIA,
although the duration slightly differs. NCZTjaso displays the
longest period of persistent cold temperatures from 1550
to 1920CE, approximately. The reconstruction from the
Alps displays a LIA spanning from about 1580–1860CE,
13
while the Pyrenees exhibits low temperatures from about
1640–1920CE. Within the LIA, the decrease in temperature
during the second half of the Spörer minimum is visible in
NCZTjaso, constituting the period with the lowest temperature in the context of the last 800 years (−0.55 °C below
average), while in the Alps and Pyrenees the decrease in
temperatures was slight or non-existent. The lowest temperature anomalies in the Alps and Pyrenees were reached
during the Dalton minimum (−1.4 and −0.4 °C, respectively), which is also evident in NCZTjaso. In contrast, the
Maunder minimum is visible in the Alps and Pyrenees
reconstructions but not in NCZTjaso.
The end of the LIA took place a bit earlier in the Alps,
with above average temperatures between 1870 and 1920
CE, while in the Pyrenees and NCZTjaso temperatures
remained below average during that period.
All three reconstructions (Alps, Pyrenees and NCZTjaso)
agree on the warming during the period from 1930 to 1975
CE. Indeed, the Pyrenees experienced the maximum temperature during that period (+0.2 °C) and NCZTjaso also
shows similar high temperature anomalies (+0.3 °C).
However, Pyrenees and NCZTjaso display a decrease in
temperatures during the most recent decades (1975–2003
CE), while in the Alps the last decades of the twentieth
Southeast of the Iberian Peninsula
83
Fig. 6 Superposed epoch analysis (SEA). Relative summer temperature departures in Alps (left), Pyrenees (middle) and NCZTjaso
(right) for 5 years preceding/following events averaged over 7 post
1800-eruptions. White star indicate a statistically-significant departure at 99 % level (see methods section)
Table 1 Main descriptive parameters for reconstructed and simulated temperatures at Cazorla Range including maximum, minimum
and range of temperature variation. Values correspond to series of
anomalies with respect to the 1900–1990 mean and smoothed with a
40-years centred moving average. The value in brackets correspond to
the century where the anomaly occurred
century were the warmest decades in the context of the last
800 years, reaching a temperature anomaly of +0.8 °C.
The SEA reveals the impact of volcanic eruptions on
the reconstructed temperature at the three European sites:
Cazorla Range, Pyrenees and Alps (Fig. 6). The SEA shows
a significant decrease in summer temperature in all three
sites, Alps, Pyrenees and NCZTjaso, in the year after volcanic eruptions, pointing to a reasonable common volcanic
forcing in all three locations for the last two centuries.
3.2 Simulated and reconstructed temperatures
Table 1 summarizes the range of temperature anomalies
spanned by the reconstruction and simulations.
The comparison of the amplitude of reconstructed temperatures with those derived from the simulations performed
with GCMs generally show a better agreement of NCZTjaso
with ensemble members of the MPI-ESM simulations E1
and E2 and CCSM4 (Table 1). On the contrary, the ensemble
13
84
members of ECHO-G (Erik and Erik2) and the simulations
of the CMIP5 models GISS and IPSL show wider amplitudes, while BCC and MPI depict a smaller range of past
temperature variations. Simulations derived from the climate
model GISS should be interpreted taking into consideration
the existence on potential drifts on the first centuries (1000–
1300 CE) of the simulation (Schmidt et al. 2013).
The resemblance in amplitude between reconstructed
and simulated temperatures is also sometimes associated
with similar maxima and minima. As mentioned above,
decadal to multi-decadal temperature anomalies at NCZTjaso
range from −0.55 °C (decade of 1530) to +0.40 °C (beginning of fourteenth century). The five members of the E1
ensemble display on average minimum temperature anomalies of −0.6 °C (during the second half of the thirteenth
century) and maximum anomalies of +0.35 °C (at the end
of the twentieth century). Similarly, the three members of
the ensemble of simulations E2 also display maximum and
minimum decadal temperature anomalies close to the ones
displayed by NCZTjaso (−0.6 and +0.3 °C, respectively).
However, CCSM4 show minimum temperature anomalies
that are far more negative (−0.8 °C) and slightly more positive (+0.51°) than the reconstructed anomalies.
Fig. 7 Comparison of reconstructed summer temperatures at
Cazorla Range (NCZTjaso) and
those simulated by ECHO-G
(ensemble Erik, top panel), by
MPI-ESM (ensembles E1 and
E2, middle panels) and a set of
single simulations from CMIP5
climate models (bottom panel).
All series are anomalies with
respect to the 1900–1990 mean
and smoothed with a 40-years
centred moving average
13
I. Dorado Liñán et al.
The simulations of ECHO-G display wider amplitudes
of decadal temperature anomalies: from −1.15 °C (twentieth century) to +0.2 °C (last decade of the twentieth century) for Erik 1 and from −1.6 °C (middle fifteenth century) to +0.22 °C (last decade of the twentieth century) in
the case of Erik2. Regarding the rest of the CMIP5 simulations, the spread in the range between the maxima and
minima shown by each simulation is large. The most pronounced minimum corresponds to IPSL (−1.12 °C ) while
the warmer minimum temperature anomalies are displayed
by MPI (−0.472°). Likewise, IPSL exhibits the highest
maximum temperature anomaly (+0.51 °C) while CCSM
displays the lowest (+0.15 °C).
The comparison of reconstruction and simulation curves
reveals that the temperatures simulated by Erik1 and Erik2
from 1200 to 1900 CE are consistently lower than those
reconstructed in NCZTjaso (Fig. 7). Indeed, the LIA seems
to last much longer in Erik 1 and Erik 2 (from 1300 to 1900
CE approximately) than in NCZTjaso (from 1500 to 1900
CE). The simulations and the proxy reconstruction agree on
the decadal variations from 1700 CE onwards (i.e., Dalton
solar minimum) and on the magnitude and rate of temperatures along the twentieth century.
Southeast of the Iberian Peninsula
85
Fig. 8 Correlation between
NCZTjaso and the different GCM
outputs as a function of increasing smoothing of the series.
The group of graphs on the top
show the correlations for the
full time-span (1195–2000 CE)
and the graphs on the bottom
for the period 1500–2000 CE.
From left to right: correlation of
NCZTjaso with ECHO-G (Erik1
and Erik2); MPI-ESM (ensembles members of E1 and E2)
and the set of single simulations
from the CMIP5 (BCC, GISS,
IPSL, MPI and CCSM4). Black
dashed line indicates 95 %
significance level
When comparing NCZTjaso with the two ensembles of
simulations performed with the MPI-ESM model, a closer
similarity of the amplitude of past decadal summer temperatures variations becomes evident. Summer temperatures displayed by most of the members of E1 and E2 during a large part of the LIA (1500–1750 CE) are slightly
cooler than those showed by NCZTjaso. Reconstructed and
simulated (E1 and E2) summer temperatures show good
agreement on decadal variations and trends from 1750 to
2000CE.
Similarly to the simulations of ECHO-G, the model
IPSL simulates much colder temperatures than NCZTjaso.
The rest of the CMIP5 models simulate temperatures on
the range of those described by NCZTjaso but with reduced
amplitudes of variations. During the LIA, simulated temperatures by BCC, GISS, MPI and CCSM4 are lower than
described by NCZTjaso. Differences among simulations are
larger during the period 1750–1800 CE when NCZTjaso
shows a maximum only reproduced by MPI and IPSL and a
high variability in the temperatures described by the different CMIP5 models exists. Generally, simulated and reconstructed summer temperatures show a better agreement on
decadal variations and trends from 1850 to 2000 CE and
major discrepancies exist for the period 1200–1500CE,
when series are consistently anticorrelated.
The correlation between NCZTjaso and the different
GCM outputs as a function of increasing smoothing of
the series (Fig. 8) reveals that NCZTjaso better agrees with
the ensemble of simulation of MPI-ESM E2 in their past
temperature estimations, specifically with the ensemble
member E2-1. The correlations of NCZTjaso with the different simulations increase in every case when removing
the MCA-LIA period from the correlation analysis, where
simulated and reconstructed temperatures are usually anticorrelated. Furthermore, when considering only the period
1500–2000CE, the correlations between NCZTjaso with the
ensemble members E2-1 and E2-2 are significant at all different time scales. Other simulation members such as E1-1
display significant correlations at decadal scales but lose
the statistical significance with increasing filtering.
In line with the results found in the comparison of
NCZTjaso with simulations with a complete external forcing,
reconstructed temperatures at Cazorla Range do not show
significant correlation with any of the single-forcing simulations in the period 1200–1550 CE (Fig. 9). After 1500 CE,
temperature variations significantly correlate at decadal
scales with simulations forced with volcanism. The influence
of volcanism is continuous during the nineteenth and twentieth century, though it is at the limit of 95 % significance. The
SEA clearly shows the negative effect on temperature of volcanism 1 year after the eruption takes place. These results are
in line with those found for NCZTjaso. No other single-forcing simulations show significant correlations with NCZTjaso
in the three periods (1195–2000, 1500–2000 and 1860–2000
CE) considered. The amplitude of the temperature variations described by the reconstruction is usually larger
than those shown by the simulations forced with TSI,
volcanic forcing or LCC. However, during LIA NCZTjaso
shows a smaller variability than the simulation forced
with TSI and volcanism. Only LCC displays a similarly
reduced variability.
4 Discussion and summary
4.1 Eight-hundred years of summer temperature variations
at the Cazorla Range
NCZTjaso describes 800 years of summer-to-autumn temperature variations in the south of the IP covering the
13
86
I. Dorado Liñán et al.
Fig. 9 External climate forcing at Cazorla Range. a Comparison of NCZTjaso and the single-forcing simulations performed with
MPI-ESM: SF solar forcing, VF volcanic forcing, LCC land cover
changes, GG greenhouse gases. All series are anomalies with respect
to the 1900–1990 mean and smoothed with a 40-years centred moving average. b Reconstructions of volcanic eruptions from Crowley
(2000); c reconstructions of solar activity: the TSI curve derived from
Crowley (2000) (orange) and the set of TSI reconstructions used in
the CMIP5 simulations based on different sources (yellow); d concentration in the greenhouse gasses NO2, CO2 and CH4; e, f correlation
between NCZTjaso and the simulations LCC, Solar and VF as a function of increasing smoothing of the series for the periods 1195–2000
and 1500–2000CE, respectively; g evolution of the correlation with
increasing smoothing between NCZTjaso and all simulations for the
period 1860–2000CE; h relative summer temperature departures for
5 years preceding/following events averaged over 7 post 1800-eruptions. White stars indicate a significant departure at 99 %. Periods of
solar minima are shaded: WM Wolf minimum; SM Spörer Minimum;
MM Maunder Minimum and DM Dalton Minimum. Black dashed
line indicates 95 % significance level
MCA-LIA transition, the LIA and the modern times.
Importantly, the interpretation of NCZTjaso, as a temperature proxy, with the inverse relationship between TRW
and temperature shown by Dorado Liñán et al. (2013), is
supported by the results of the SEA. After volcanic eruptions the TRW tends to be larger than average, indicating
lower temperatures as in other temperature reconstructions
from the Alps and the Pyrenees. It could be argued that this
result would still not be conclusive since tropical volcanic
eruptions are known to nudge the state of the North Atlantic Oscillation towards a more positive state and thus would
cause drier winter-spring seasons in the Iberian Peninsula.
If the TRW at Cazorla were recording hydroclimate they
would, therefore, still display a signal in the SEA. However, in this hypothetical case, the TRW would tend to be
narrower after volcanic eruptions and not wider as the SEA
analysis shows. We conclude, therefore, that the SEA supports the interpretation of TRW at Cazorla as a temperature
proxy.
The occurrence of climatic anomalies spanning several
decades/centuries such as the MCA and LIA during the
last millennium has been widely reported. However, an
accurate temporal and regional characterization of these
anomalous periods becomes more uncertain further back in
time due to the lower number of available palaeorecords.
Thus, if the timing of the LIA is still not clear, the onset,
characteristics and duration of the MCA are even less well
defined. These fuzzy time definitions preclude the characterization of a MCA-LIA transitional period, which appears
not only as one of the most interesting climatic periods of
the last millennium but also one of the most incoherent in
the literature. Not all publications dealing with MCA and
13
Southeast of the Iberian Peninsula
LIA define a transitional period between these two prolonged anomalies (i.e., Lamb 1965; Seager and Burgman
2011; Büntgen et al. 2011; Moreno et al. 2011; Jones et al.
2001; Guiot et al. 2010) and the existing definitions consider different timing and duration: 1125–1500 CE (Heinrich et al. 2013), 1100–1400 CE (Mann et al. 2008), 1200–
1400 CE (Mann et al. 2009; González-Rouco et al. 2011),
1300–1400 CE (Trouet et al. 2012), and 1350–1500 CE
(Graham et al. 2011).
Based on these definitions, at NCZTjaso, the period spanning 1200–1500 CE has been considered as the MCA–
LIA transition although the temperatures were clearly
dominated by prolonged warm periods and could also be
considered as a part of the MCA based on the definitions
proposed by some authors (e.g. Guiot et al. 2010 defined
1400 CE as the end of the MCA). The warm MCA–LIA
transition at Cazorla Range does not generally agree with
the reconstruction from the Alps and Pyrenees. Actually,
there is a consistent anti-correlation between the series,
which is most remarkable in the period between the Wolf
and Spörer minima. Despite dominant warm conditions,
NCZTjaso shows some cold episodes, the longest spanning
1360–1410 CE and coinciding with a solar maximum.
This negative temperature anomaly at the Cazorla Range
appears as a warm episode at the Pyrenees and a period
of increasing temperatures in the Alps. Such a cold episode in Cazorla during the second half of the fourteenth
century has been reported by other authors and explained
as the result of large and intense deforestation campaigns
(e.g. Guiot et al. 2010) probably triggered by the Crisis of
the Late Middle Ages during the fourteenth century (Goldsmith 1995). Deforestation may cause a decrease in temperatures due to the increase in surface albedo (Pongratz
et al. 2009). However, this biogeophysical effect is usually
local and overridden at larger spatial scales by the biogeochemical effects of the deforestation in the global atmospheric carbon cycle (Pongratz et al. 2010). In our particular
case, the second half of the fourteenth century in the south
of the IP was dominated by the war with the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada (Laredo Quesada 1979; Harvey 1992) and
by the Civil War that took place between 1351 and 1369
CE (Primera Guerra Civil Castellana; Valdeón Baruque
2002). The Civil War was not focused on this part of the
IP and probably did not exert a strong direct impact on the
area. However, Cazorla Range is closely located to the former borders of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, and thus,
a high deforestation due to war demands for wood seems
likely, and could have contributed to an increase in surface
albedo and a local cooling.
At NCZTjaso, LIA spans the period 1500–1920 CE,
describing a slightly more persistent cold temperatures
in the south of the IP than those described by other European tree-ring based climate reconstruction in the Pyrenees
87
(Dorado Liñán et al. 2012) and Alps (Büntgen et al. 2011).
Nevertheless, the reported onset and end of the LIA also
display a considerable range of dates at different regions
and spatial scales: the starting has been set at the beginning
of the thirteenth century (Esper et al. 2002), in the fourteenth century (Moreno et al. 2011), fifteenth century (i.e.,
Mann et al. 2008, 2009) and sixteenth century (Lamb 1965;
Bradley 2000; Guiot et al. 2005). The suggested end dates
of the LIA are the earliest in the eighteenth century (Lamb
1965; Mann et al. 2009), in the nineteenth century (Bradley
2000; Moreno et al. 2011) and at the beginning of the twentieth century (Mann et al. 2008; Guiot et al. 2005, 2010).
The cold period described by NCZTjaso, is consistent
with patterns based on large scale composite temperature
reconstructions for the Northern Hemisphere, which span
the period 1400–1900 CE (Mann et al. 1998, 1999; Jones
et al. 1998; PAGES 2k Consortium 2013). In contrast, it
disagrees with the most recent European reconstruction of
summer temperatures based on tree-rings, which reports
a LIA starting in 1200 CE in the southwest of Europe
(Guiot et al. 2010). The difference could be due to the limited availability of tree-ring records in the IP in the study
of Guiot et al. (2010). Indeed, there are only two tree-ring
records covering the geographical area between the French
Alps and the Atlas in Morocco and this may not fully capture the climate variability of the area.
Overall, the LIA was a cold period with low variability compared to the preceding centuries. Some warm episodes exist such as the second half of the eighteenth, just
before the Dalton minimum. This warm spell is evident
not only in local–regional summer (Büntgen et al. 2011)
and winter (Leijonhufvud et al. 2010) temperature reconstructions in Europe, but also in continental (Luterbacher
et al. 2004) and in most of the hemispheric scale proxybased reconstructions (Bradley 2000; Esper et al. 2002;
Jones et al. 2001; Mann et al. 1998, 2008) highlighting the
large-scale character of the warm episode. Thus, the driver
of this warmth may also be global, such as an increase in
solar irradiance between the Maunder and Dalton Minimum (Keller et al. 2004; Luterbacher et al. 2004) or a biogeochemical effect of anthropogenic LCC (Pongratz et al.
2010).
Regarding the twentieth century, and similarly to the
reconstructed temperature at the Pyrenees (Dorado Liñán
et al. 2012), NCZTjaso does not show unprecedented warmth
in the context of the last 800 years, such as other wellknown regional (Büntgen et al. 2011), continental (Guiot
et al. 2010) and hemispheric tree-ring based temperature
reconstructions (e.g., Mann et al. 2008). The warmest temperatures at NCZTjaso were reached between the end of the
13th and the first half of the fourteenth century (MCA–
LIA transitional period or MCA depending on the definition). Furthermore, the magnitude of the twentieth century
13
88
warmth at Cazorla Range was exceeded twice in the last
800 years, at the end of the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, underlining the warm but not exceptional nature of
the twentieth century summer temperatures at the Cazorla
Range in the context of the last 800 years.
It is worth mentioning the differences in amplitude of
past summer temperature variations displayed by the three
reconstructions compared in this paper. Within this group,
the Alps display consistently wider amplitudes of variations, while the Pyrenees show the smallest. Regardless of
a possible overestimation or underestimation of the temperature variations in some of the reconstructions, the temperature amplitudes shown by NCZTjaso agree with those
displayed by most of the simulations used in this paper, as
shown later.
4.2 Drivers of temperature variations
The signatures exerted by global natural external forcing
such as volcanism and solar variability have been identified
in the climate of the past millennium (Briffa et al. 1998;
Crowley 2000; Gao et al. 2008). However, the role played
by long-term anthropogenic forcing in past temperature
variations, like e.g. LCC, is more uncertain.
Even though natural external forcing such as solar
irradiance may exert a less detectable influence in summer temperature variations than in other seasons (Hegerl
et al. 2011), TSI and especially volcanism appears to have
played a role on decadal to multidecadal summer temperature variations during the last millennium at Cazorla
Range. In agreement with previous literature, the combination of low solar irradiance and high volcanic activity coincides with well-known periods of lower temperatures such
as the second half of Spörer and Dalton solar minima at the
Cazorla Range. Although these two forcings sometimes act
simultaneously, intensive volcanism alone has likely been
responsible for a punctual decrease in temperature (i.e.
middle thirteenth century coinciding with the largest eruption of the last millennium) and could even have cancelled
the effect of the warming induced by TSI maxima (e.g. end
of the 16th until middle of seventeenth century). Indeed,
volcanism has shown up as the only external forcing with
a significant correlation with decadal variations of summer
temperature at the Cazorla Range for the last 5 centuries
(Fig. 9) and responsible for the punctual decrease in temperature after the volcanic eruptions (Fig. 6). Sustained
high solar irradiance alone seemed to contribute to the
enhancement of summer temperatures at the Cazorla Range
in particular periods such as 1200 and1400 CE and during the maxima in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
However, we could not find a sustained correlation of solar
forcing along the millennium in line with previous works
(Hegerl et al. 2007).
13
I. Dorado Liñán et al.
Some authors have found that volcanic and solar forcing alone cannot explain the full range of summer temperatures variations in Europe (Guiot et al. 2010). Likewise, at
the Cazorla Range the situation may be similar and other
factors likely contributed to decadal changes on summer
temperatures. The correlation of NCZTjaso with the singleforcing MPI-ESM simulations can give some insights into
the influence exerted by each forcing over the long period
considered but this approach cannot fully explain more
short-term or punctual influences. For instance, solar and
volcanic forcing were coincident with extreme global
temperature negative anomalies during LIA (e.g., second half of the Spörer minimum 1500–1550CE; Crowley
2000; Gao et al. 2008). However, for the Cazorla Range
case, simulations forced with just TSI or volcanism show
a much higher variability of summer temperatures during
1550 and 1700 CE than NCZTjaso. Simulated temperatures
forced with only LCC do not reproduce the Spörer minimum but present reduced variations of temperatures during
1550 and 1700 CE similar to those displayed by NCZTjaso.
This may indicate a too high sensitivity of GCMs to TSI
and volcanic forcing or an underestimation by NCZTjaso of
the real amplitude of summer temperature variations during
the LIA.
The attribution of the nineteenth and twentieth century
summer temperature changes to a single/dominant external
forcing is also complex. Single-forcing simulations driven
by volcanism or LCC display the highest correlations with
NCZTjaso, though not highly significant. Furthermore, the
influence of anthropogenic forcing such as LCC during
the last two centuries seems to be increasing and becoming dominant while the effect exerted by natural forcing on
temperatures is decreasing as pointed out by Hegerl et al.
(2007). Neither the temperature reconstruction at Cazorla
Range, nor the temperature observations display an increasing trend during the twentieth century. Thus, the effect of
increasing concentration in greenhouse gases during the
last century seems to have been cancelled by other forcing
or long-term internal variability.
NCZTjaso agrees best with the ensemble of simulations
E2 performed with MPI-ESM in terms of amplitude and
variations of past temperature, in particular with the ensemble members E2-1 and E2-2. Both, E1 and E2, as well as
the simulations included on the CMIP5 contain a more
complete set of external forcings than ECHO-G, including anthropogenic forcing such as LCC. However, simulations from E1 and CMIP5 do not correlate better with
NCZTjaso than Erik. The simulations E2 and Erik make
use of a TSI curve with large amplitudes (Crowley 2000)
while the reconstruction used in E1 and the CMIP5 simulations used a much smaller amplitude of the solar variations (Krivova and Solanki 2008; Steinhilber et al. 2009).
The amplitude of past solar variations is currently under
Southeast of the Iberian Peninsula
debate. Some authors (Krivova et al. 2007) argue that TSI
is much smaller than the one suggested by Crowley (2000)
while others point to a wider amplitude of past solar variations (Shapiro et al. 2011). Although volcanism seem to
play a more determinant role in past temperature variations
at the Cazorla Range than TSI, models forced with TSI
curves of wider amplitude such as E2 from the MPI-ESM
lead to temperature amplitudes closer to those of NCZTjaso.
In contrast, Hind and Moberg (2013) found a better agreement between proxy-based temperature reconstructions and
simulations using TSI curves of reduced amplitude of variations. These contradictory findings and the fact that the
tree-ring based reconstruction from the Alps (Büntgen et al.
2011) displays a three-time larger amplitude of past temperature variations than Pyrenees and NCZTjaso, underlines
the need of further research in this specific topic.
The role played by the stronger external forcing and the
initial conditions prescribed for the simulations may partly
explain the offset between reconstructed and simulated
temperatures with ECHO-G. The lack of agreement is even
larger for most of the CMIP5 models in which the more
complete external forcing including LCC (CCSM4, GISS
and MPI) and/or aerosols (BCC, CCSM4, GISS, MPI) did
not lead to an increased agreement with NCZTjaso compared
with ECHO-G simulations. The low agreement might be
partly explained by the TSI curve of reduced amplitude but
also by the internal variability. For the CMIP5 models only
one simulation per model was available and thus, it was not
possible to quantify the effects of the different initial conditions and the role played by internal variability in the simulated temperatures, limiting the analysis and attribution of
climate forcing that can be done in this case.
4.3 The MCA–LIA transitional period
The lack of agreement between model simulations and
NCZTjaso during the MCA-LIA transitional period is evident; especially for the time span 1350–1500CE. The
general warm temperatures described by NCZTjaso for this
period are in agreement with large scale reconstructions
(Mann et al. 2009). The cold episode spanning 1360–1410
CE has also been reported by other authors. However, no
single forcing seems to be driving such changes. Recent
studies revealed that simulations with climate models for
the MCA–LIA transition display diverging patterns and
disagree with proxy reconstructions (González-Rouco et al.
2011). Thus the lack of agreement between NCZTjaso and
model simulations during this period is not uncommon.
Some studies have suggested that changes during 1200
and 1400 CE could be dominated by internal variability
and therefore not externally forced (Mann et al. 2009; Graham et al. 2011; Trouet et al. 2012), and thus a correlation
between model simulations and reconstructions should not
89
be expected. The dominant warm temperatures during most
of the period 1200–1500 CE at Cazorla Range could be
explained, at least partly, with the persistent positive North
Atlantic Oscillation phase in winter-spring described in
detail by Trouet et al. (2009). However, whether summer
temperatures at the Cazorla Range during this period could
be affected by an internally generated shift in winter-spring
large-scale circulation patterns is physically not clear, and a
question beyond the aim of this paper.
4.4 Summary
The summer temperature reconstruction of Cazorla Range
displays major climate variations in broad agreement with
previous publications. The LIA lasts slightly longer than in
other local and regional European reconstructions, and the
twentieth century does not show unprecedented warmth in
the context of the last 800 years. The highest temperatures
were reached during the period defined here as MCA–LIA
transitional period (1200–1500 CE), pointing to possible
prolonged MCA conditions in the southeast of the IP.
From the comparison with model simulations, it appears
that internal variability alone cannot explain the observed
temperature variations as suggested by some authors
(Bengtsson et al. 2006) and external forcings play a role.
Natural forcing, especially volcanism and solar irradiance, seems to account for most of the well-known negative temperature anomalies in the periods of solar minima.
The role played by LCC not only since industrialization
but also during the last millennium through its linkage to
the biogeochemical cycles, especially to the carbon cycle
(Pongratz et al. 2010) could not be clarified. Nevertheless,
LCC seems to be acquiring a more prominent role in constraining summer temperature variations at the IP during
the last two centuries, while the twentieth century increase
in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations seems not
to have a discernible influence on the temperature trends at
the Cazorla Range.
The comparison across different model simulations
revealed a closer agreement between the Cazorla temperature reconstruction and the models including TSI reconstructions with wider amplitude and anthropogenic LCC.
Despite this, the anti-correlation between the reconstructed
temperature and the temperature described by these simulations during parts of the MCA–LIA transitional period
highlights the lack of understanding and the limitations in
the attribution of such a temperature pattern to internal variability or external forcing. In the light of this, we consider
that reconstructions of TSI with even wider amplitudes
deserve to be tested further.
The new 800 year- long summer temperature reconstruction presented here fills a geographical gap in the body of
annual resolved proxy reconstructions and contributes to
13
90
increase the knowledge in the spatial and temporal variations of MCA and LIA expression. Further work will
require (1) additional and longer temperature reconstructions in the IP in order to provide a finer resolution of the
spatial variations of MCA and LIA; (2) further ensemble
simulations performed with CMIP5 models that will allow
a more complete evaluation of the role of natural forcing and internal variability on the amplitude of past temperature variations as well as the role of the LCC prior to
industrialization.
Acknowledgments We are very grateful to the collaborators from
the Junta de Andalucía and Centro de Capacitación y Experimentación Forestal de Cazorla, especially to A. Benavente and P. A. Tíscar
for their support to our research and help in the field all these years.
We thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments
and valuable inputs. This research was funded by MILLENNIUM
(017008-2).
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