Global Temperature Reconstructions:
One of the most critical aspects of climate science is studying how Earth's past climate relates to today's climate- these papers use paleoclimate proxies to reconstruct various aspects of past climate including temperature, greenhouse gas, and other important climate parameters.
Esper, et al, 2024: 2023 summer warmth unparalleled over the past 2,000 years
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07512-y
Including an exceptionally warm Northern Hemisphere (NH) summer1,2, 2023 has been reported as the hottest year on record3-5. Contextualizing recent anthropogenic warming against past natural variability is nontrivial, however, because the sparse 19th century meteorological records tend to be too warm6. Here, we combine observed and reconstructed June-August (JJA) surface air temperatures to show that 2023 was the warmest NH extra-tropical summer over the past 2000 years
Data Source:
Erb, et al, 2022: Reconstructing Holocene temperatures in time and space using paleoclimate data assimilation.
https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/18/2599/2022/
Another Holocene reconstruction, another even more "flat" description of the last 12,000 years, this time described in seasonal and annual configurations.
Dewitte, et al, 2022: Centennial Total Solar Irradiance Variation
Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) quantifies the solar energy received by the Earth and therefore is of direct relevance for a possible solar influence on climate change on Earth. We analyse the TSI space measurements from 1991 to 2021, and we derive a regression model that reproduces the measured daily TSI variations with a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 0.17 W/m2. The daily TSI regression model uses the MgII core to wing ratio as a facular brightening proxy and the Photometric Sunspot Index (PSI) as a measure of sunspot darkening. We reconstruct the annual mean TSI backwards to 1700 based on the Sunspot Number (SN), calibrated on the space measurements with an RMSE of 0.086 W/m2. The analysis of the 11 year running mean TSI reconstruction confirms the existence of a 105 year Gleissberg cycle. The TSI level of the current grand minimum is only about 0.15 W/m2 higher than the TSI level of the grand minimum in the beginning of the 18th century.
https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14051072
Osman, et al, 2021: Globally resolved surface temperatures since the Last Glacial Maximum
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03984-4
The latest Holocene reconstruction, 24,000 years of climate both hemispheres and global.
Bova, et al, 2021: Seasonal origin of the thermal maxima at the Holocene and the last interglacial https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-03155-x
Data Source for temperature: (d18O)
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/contributions_by_author/bova2020/bova2020-u1485-d18o.txt
Two separate points of interest, 12KY to 6.5KY and 128KY to 123KY - one of the most comprehensive data sets for early Holocene climate data and it's greatest importance is the introduction of seasonal adjustments to reduce the effect of summer growth patterns on temperature reconstructions.
Kaufman, et al, 2020: Holocene global mean surface temperature, a multi-method reconstruction approach https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32606396/
Data Source:
A lower resolution reconstruction (century range data) but much more comprehensive latitude range, details global and regional temperatures in 30° latitude strips from pole to pole. A very "quiescent" study, the first of three showing only gradual changes from 10,000 BCE to 1900 CE/
Westerhold, Et al, 2020: An astronomically dated record of Earth’s climate and its predictability over the last 66 million years
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba6853
Data Source:
https://www.science.org/doi/suppl/10.1126/science.aba6853/suppl_file/aba6853_tables_s8_s34.xlsx
A high resolution (2000 year slices) 66+ million year reconstruction, the most complete of it's kind all the way up to the KT transition.
Tierney, Et al, 2020: Past climates inform our future
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aay3701
Multiple files with CO2 and temperature proxies, with solid confidence interval data
https://github.com/jesstierney/PastClimates/blob/master/co2Smoothed.csv
https://github.com/jesstierney/PastClimates/blob/master/THansenMethod.csv
Neukom, et al, 2019: Consistent multidecadal variability in global temperature reconstructions and simulations over the Common Era
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0400-0
Data Source Files:
The most detailed and comprehensive reconstruction of the common era (1-2017 CE),
Witkowski, et al, 2017: Molecular fossils from phytoplankton reveal secular PCO2 trend over the Phanerozoic
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aat4556
One of the longest term CO2 and Temperature reconstructions, 455 million years long turbulent, showing a planet far from the smooth and simplistic curves of earlier reconstructions.
Data Source:
https://www.science.org/doi/suppl/10.1126/sciadv.aat4556/suppl_file/aat4556_data_s1.xlsx
Marcott, et al, 2013: A reconstruction of regional and global temperature for the past 11,300 years https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23471405/
Data Source:
https://www.science.org/doi/suppl/10.1126/science.1228026/suppl_file/marcott.sm.database.s1.xlsx
One of the first major high fidelity Holocene reconstructions, 11,300 years of global temperature, detailed in 20 year resolution compiled from 73 global sources.
Hansen, et al, 2013: Climate sensitivity, sea level and atmospheric carbon dioxide
Roughly 100MY of CO2 and Temperature proxy data
" Cenozoic temperature, sea level and CO2 covariations provide insights into climate sensitivity to external forcings and sea-level sensitivity to climate change. Climate sensitivity depends on the initial climate state, but potentially can be accurately inferred from precise palaeoclimate data. "
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2012.0294
Temperature Data:
https://github.com/jesstierney/PastClimates/blob/master/THansenMethod.csv
Shakun, et al, (2012): Global warming preceded by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations during the last deglaciation
One of the most thorough global reconstructions, with both northern and southern hemispheres broken down from 6500-22,000 years in the past in 100 year slices. Using several different locations and technologies to determine global paleoclimate temperatures, very comprehensive.
Sadly, it's paywalled.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature10915
Data Source:
Mann, et al, 1998: Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries
"Spatially resolved global reconstructions of annual surface temperature patterns over the past six centuries are based on the multivariate calibration of widely distributed high-resolution proxy climate indicators. " One of the most important paleoclimate papers and it's the first of the major paleoclimate reconstructions.
https://www.nature.com/articles/33859
The public dataset and other information about the paper is available here:
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/shared/research/old/mbh98.html
Global Greenhouse Gas Reconstructions
Toward a Cenozoic history of atmospheric CO2 | Science
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adi5177
Also affiliated with this paper:
https://zenodo.org/records/10402783
Rae, et al, (2021): Atmospheric CO2 over the Past 66 Million Years from Marine Archives
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-earth-082420-063026
Data Sources:
A "companion" paper to Westerhold, et al, 2020 - this set does not have regular data sources but several hundred interspersed over the 66 million year time frame. Very chaotic results, because of its wider range of CO2 levels over geological time it represents a completely different representation of the past, instead of the smooth
Yamamoto, et al, 2021: Bay of Bengal 1.46-million-year record of d13C and Atmospheric CO2 Data from Sedimentary Leaf Wax https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/metadata/geoportal/rest/metadata/item/noaa-ocean-34052/html
Data Source:
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/paleocean/indian_ocean/yamamoto2021/yamamoto2021-u1446.txt
1.46 million years of equatorial CO2 levels, less subjected to polar and hemispheric bias than ice proxies, this has more irregular data points but still very high resolution and as all modern reconstructions are showing, a far more noisy world than the old classic low resolution studies/
Köhler, P et al. (2017): A 156 kyr smoothed history of the atmospheric greenhouse gases CO2, CH4, and N2O and their radiative forcing.
https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/9/363/2017/
https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.871271
Data Directory: 14 individual files on each gas, raw data and compiled
https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.871273
Single ZIP file for all 14 records:
https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.871273?format=zip
The most detailed and comprehensive long range data set for CO2, CH4 and N2O, between 156,000 and 122,000 years. Perhaps the most detailed of all high fidelity CO2 sources. Includes built in calculations of forcing changes for all three molecules.
Ice Reconstructions: Greenland
Mankoff, Et al, 2021: Greenland ice sheet mass balance from 1840 through next week
https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/13/5001/2021/
"The mass of the Greenland ice sheet is declining as mass gain from snow accumulation is exceeded by mass loss from surface meltwater runoff, marine-terminating glacier calving and submarine melting, and basal melting. Here we use the input–output (IO) method to estimate mass change from 1840 through next week.
https://dataverse.geus.dk/api/access/datafile/36984
Solar Reconstructions:
Wu, et al, 2018: Solar total and spectral irradiance reconstruction over the last 9000 years
The gold standard for paleoclimate long term insolation data, the SATIRE-M data set
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2018/12/aa32956-18/aa32956-18.html
" The aim of this work is to provide the most up-to-date physics-based reconstruction of the solar total and spectral irradiance (TSI/SSI) over the last nine millennia."
Data source for decadal solar total irradiance 6755 BC - 1885 AD
http://www2.mps.mpg.de/projects/sun-climate/data/SATIRE-M_wu18_tsi.txt
Steinhilber, et al, 2012: Records of common production rate of cosmogenic radionuclides, cosmic ray intensity (solar modulation) and solar activity (total solar irradiance) during the past 9400 years.
Roughly 9000 years of solar output measurements in 22 year increments. A very strong early examination of paleoclimate solar input performed by examining the comparative isotopic ratios of Carbon 14 and Beryllium 10
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_forcing/solar_variability/steinhilber2012.xls
There is a nearly two centuries history on major papers published on the physics of Climate Science, here's a helpful guide to some of the most important papers
Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1824): The First Paper that Recognized the importance of the atmosphere at regulating Earth's (or any celestial body's) Surface Temperature
https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/Fourier1827Trans.pdf
This was the first scientific attempt to understand global surface temperatures . "On the Temperatures of the Terrestrial Sphere and Interplanetary Space"
A surprisingly complete and thorough examination of the causes for surface temperatures, from the energy output of the Earth's core (very small, he estimated 1/30th °F) to solar radiation and the absorbed and re-radiated heat of the surface, oceans and atmosphere.
Eunice Foote (1856) First paper linking CO2 to absorbed radiation of light:
This groundbreaking work by one of the pioneering women of science - "Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun's Rays." The first experimental data on the topic.
John Tyndall (1859) Second paper on CO2's influence on atmospheric heating,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/111604?seq=1
" Note on the Transmission of Radiant Heat through Gaseous Bodies" This details the instrumentation and equipment he used, a wonderful look at the descriptive sciences in the days before they printed drawings or early photos to describe apparatus and methodologies. For actual photos of his equipment, see below:
https://www.rigb.org/explore-science/explore/collection/john-tyndalls-radiant-heat-apparatus
Svante Arrhenius (1896) First attempts to calculate the effect of CO2 concentrations and feedbacks on surface temperature
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14786449608620846?journalCode=tphm16
"On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air Upon the Temperature of the Ground," The first work to attempt to quantify the exact temperature effects on CO2 (Carbonic Acid), the most important paper written in the 19th century on climate and this is an excellent starting point on modern climate science.
He composed a follow up book in 1906, "Worlds in the Making: The Evolution of the Universe " that is not available easily on the web but a major word of caution on this, there are a lot of fake versions of this paper distributed! Note: This is very large, and not ideal viewing on a mobile device.
https://sealevel.info/Arrhenius1908_worldsinmaking00.pdf
Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin (1899) The first warnings of possible climate issues ahead/
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/608449
"An Attempt to Frame a Working Hypothesis of the Cause of Glacial Periods on an Atmospheric Basis" A groundbreaking paper in many ways, clearly a companion piece to Arrhenius, 1896 and it discusses in far greater details the geological processes of glaciation and deglaciation as amplified by CO2's effect on the atmosphere. If people wish to believe the idea of global warming is a modern late-20th century political movement, this should immediately disqualify their arguments.
Edward O. Hulbert (1931) An attempt to determine the precise doubling effect of CO2
https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.38.1876
"The Temperature of the Lower Atmosphere of the Earth" An early work trying to determine the doubling effect on CO2, the results are not that far from some long paleoclimate assays of very long data sets available to us in the last few years: "Calculation shows that doubling or tripling the amount of the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere increases the average sea level temperature by about 4° and 7°K, respectively; halving or reducing to zero the carbon dioxide decreases the temperature by similar amounts. ' A little over a century after Tyndall, he draws this conclusion: "Thus the calculation indicates that the carbon dioxide theory of the ice ages, originally proposed by Tyndall, is a possible theory."
Guy Callendar (1938) The source of the "Callendar Equation" still used to determine for radiative forcing of CO2.
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/qj.49706427503
"The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature", At the time this was published, global CO2 levels were roughly 309PPM, compared to the pre-industrial level of 276PPM. To put this into perspective, that difference (11.7%) took 185 years, we're currently (annual average) 12.2% higher than 20 years ago- our current rate of change is nearly an order of magnitude faster than the rate which caused Callendar such alarm in 1938.
Gilbert Plass (1956), The first major warning paper, originally commissioned by the US Navy
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2153-3490.1956.tb01206.x
"The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change", A century after Foote's first paper, this is a no holds barred account of the risks of future crisis we're observing today, and the introduction of "Climate Change" terminology to describe the effects of Carbon dioxide concentrations.
Roger Revelle & Hans E. Suess (1957) Isotopic evidence that the increasing CO2 levels were not based on modern CO2 but fossil fuel derived CO2
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3402/tellusa.v9i1.9075
"Carbon Dioxide Exchange Between Atmosphere and Ocean and the Question of an Increase of Atmospheric CO2 during the Past Decades", Better methods and equipment allow identification of the source of increasing CO2, clearly determining by looking at isotopic ratios their source.
An excellent early paper on the risks involved to future climate,
Syukuro Manabe & Richard T. Wetherald (1967) The beginnings of computer climate modeling and advanced Global Circulation Models
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/24/3/1520-0469_1967_024_0241_teotaw_2_0_co_2.xml
"Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity" - This is probably the most important paper on climate change published. it was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics for Syukuro Manabe for his work on computer models of "Global Circulation Models" this was their first collaboration, they added another paper in 1972 trying to refine their earlier calculations
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/32/1/1520-0469_1975_032_0003_teodtc_2_0_co_2.xml
We could easily dedicate an entire page of this website simply on his works alone; it's just easier to link to his bibliography:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/search?f_0=author&q_0=Syukuro+Manabe
Sawyer, (1972) The "ignored" warnings about anthropogenic CO2, now 50 years old.
https://wwhttps://www.nature.com/articles/239023a0w.nature.com/articles/239023a0
"Man-Made Carbon Dioxide and the "Greenhouse" effect - Sorry this is a PDF link, this paper predicted a short term 0.6°C increase in global temperatures if we saw a 25% increase in CO2 concentrations- We didn't hit 25% (only 13%) but there was a 0.5°C increase.
https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/warming_papers/sawyer.1972.warm2000.pdf
Prata, 2007: More evidence to support Manabe and Wetherald's 1967 model of water vapor feedback models.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01431160802036508?journalCode=tres20
"The climatological record of clear‐sky longwave radiation at the Earth's surface: evidence for water vapour feedback?" The answer is "yes, water vapor feedback leads to greater warming than just CO2 alone".
Feldman, et al, 2015: An investigation into the atmosphere's change in energy absorption caused by added CO2
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14240
"Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010". This paper and several later companion pieces detail and quantify observational changes in atmospheric absorption and how they correlate to known physics and prior models. This ties all of the theoretical and practical observations of nearly 200 years together, in a clear and concise package: Observations, hypothesis, experiments, theory, and now validation.
Etminan, et al, 2016: An important paper defining new calculations for the three main greenhouse gases and their inter-relationships
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL071930
"Radiative forcing of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide: A significant revision of the methane radiative forcing" - this isn't "new research" but an important resource for determining the impacts of CH4, N2O and CO2, this is the benchmark for forcing calculations.
Kramer, et al, 2021: Another clear piece of satellite based data showing a change in between incoming and outgoing energy balance.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020GL091585
" Observational Evidence of Increasing Global Radiative Forcing" one of the most conclusive papers on the clear role human emissions are having on the atmosphere and therefore global surface temperatures
Scrips Institute Weekly CO2 Data:
ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/co2/co2_weekly_mlo.txt
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html
FTP and web link to the latest weekly CO2 measurements
NOAA:
https://gml.noaa.gov/aggi/aggi.html
NOAA's database for multiple different greenhouse gases, with additional links for individual Excel compatible downloads: Radiative Forcings for each of the major gases since 1979:
https://gml.noaa.gov/aggi/AGGI_Table.csv
Mole Fractions (parts per million or greater) for each of the major gases since 1979:
https://gml.noaa.gov/aggi/NOAA_MoleFractions_2021.csv
NOAA has links for each of the three major GHGs, CO2 is updated daily, and very promptly- CH4 and N2O are lagging by a few months.
https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2/co2_trend_gl.txt
https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/n2o/n2o_mm_gl.txt
https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/ch4/ch4_mm_gl.txt
Climate Reanalyzer:
https://climatereanalyzer.org/
An excellent visual global "snapshot" of many real time climate data observations. Run by the University of Maine, this is an excellent resource to see what's happening to global climate here and now. Below is my personal choice, today's global and regional comparative temperatures displayed visually and as a series of numbers.
https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#t2anom
NSIDC
National Snow and Ice Data Center:
Another fine source for both data and explainers for polar information, the website is updated daily.
One of their easiest to understand daily sources is "Charctic" a visual guide to polar ice extent,
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
There's a great resource for raw polar ice data inside of their Excel FTP server, you can download easy to understand and work with data files updated daily on polar ice, at many different levels of granularity from the entire pole (both north and south) to each individual region.
https://masie_web.apps.nsidc.org/pub//DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/seaice_analysis/
My personal favorite Excel spreadsheet has both poles individual daily data in a very easy to work with format with some mild analysis already built in. This is a literal "one stop shop" for all polar extent data needs.
Polar Science Center:
An excellent resource for Arctic Ice information, the main data page includes links to several different indexes including daily and monthly summaries.
http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/data/
Arctic Ice Volume Data, in monthly format since 1979:
Max Planck Institute for Solar Research:
https://www2.mps.mpg.de/projects/sun-climate/data.html
The finest source for all solar data, in different time resolutions from daily insolation (solar output measured at the top of Earth's atmosphere: From 1610 to 2018:
https://www2.mps.mpg.de/projects/sun-climate/data/SATIRE-T_SATIRE-S_TSI_20210618.txt
Here's the long term SATIRE-M 8770 year solar output dataset.
https://www2.mps.mpg.de/projects/sun-climate/data/SATIRE-M_wu18_tsi.txt
Colorado State University:
https://lasp.colorado.edu/home/science/
One of the most valuable sources for global climate and solar studies, they cover a large range of databases on previous and active projects, the link below is for the latest solar output studies:
https://lasp.colorado.edu/data/tsis/tsi_data/tsis_tsi_L3_c24h_latest.txt
Sunspot Index and Long-term Solar Observations :
https://wwwbis.sidc.be/silso/datafiles
A daily resource for sunspot data from 1818 on, or monthly from 1749 on
The current month's data can be found here:
https://wwwbis.sidc.be/silso/DATA/EISN/EISN_current.txt
2°Institute:
https://www.2degreesinstitute.org/
A great source of climate data with excellent explainers on all of the major topics.
A great place to start is their "Climate Dashboard", it leads to several charts dealing with past and current levels of CO2, CH4, N2O, O2, sea level and surface temperatures. Each section has it's own drop down menu where you can find data at several different time frames and you can zoom in on each chart to examine specific it more closely. Can't recommend any website more highly than this.
https://www.climatelevels.org/?pid=2degreesinstitute&theme=grid-light
Global Milankovitch Data Calculator:
A wonderful resource that can project the future solar energy on any point on the earth for the next 20 million years. Just enter the longitude and latitude, the time you want to look at and how often (in thousands of years) you want it to report data.
http://vo.imcce.fr/insola/earth/online/earth/online/index.php
:
We use cookies to analyze website traffic and optimize your website experience. By accepting our use of cookies, your data will be aggregated with all other user data.