Prominent role of volcanism in Common Era climate variability and human history

Abstract

Climate reconstructions for the whole of the Common Era are compromised by the paucity of annually-resolved and absolutely-dated proxy records prior to medieval times. Where reconstructions are based on combinations of different climate archive types of varying spatiotemporal resolution, dating uncertainty, record length and predictive skill, it is challenging to estimate past amplitude ranges, disentangle the relative roles of natural and anthropogenic forcing, and probe deeper interrelationships between climate variability and human history. Here, we compile and analyse updated versions of all the existing summer temperature sensitive treering width chronologies from the Northern Hemisphere that span the entire Common Era. We apply a novel ensemble approach to reconstruct extra-tropical summer temperatures from 1–2010 CE, and calculate uncertainties at continental to hemispheric scales. Peak warming in the 280s, 990s and 1020s, when volcanic forcing was low, was comparable to modern conditions until 2010 CE. The lowest June–August temperature anomaly in 536 not only marks the beginning of the coldest decade, but also defines the onset of the Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA). While prolonged warmth during Roman and medieval times roughly coincides with the tendency towards societal prosperity across much of the North Atlantic/European sector and East Asia, major episodes of volcanically-forced summer cooling often presaged widespread famines, plague outbreaks and political upheavals. Our study reveals a larger amplitude of spatially synchronized summer temperature variation during the first millennium of the Common Era than previously recognised. Uncertainties associated with the available tree-ring width measurements emphasize the need to develop more and longer chronologies of wood density and cell anatomy from temperature sensitive sites on both hemispheres where living and relict materials are abundant.