Astronomical Frequencies for Climate Research At the Decadal To Century Time Scale

Short-term variations of the elements representing the Earth's motion around the Sun and its rotation have been analyzed over the last 6000 years using 1-year steps. Their low-frequency part is compared first to the values obtained from a secular theory of the planetary long-term motion showing that they can be considered reliable enough to represent adequately the motion of the Earth over the last 5000 years. Spectral analysis of these values shows that the main periodicities are 2.67, 3.98, 5.26, 5.93, 7.9, 9.8, 11.9, 14.7, 15.8, 29, 42, 61, 122, 165 and 250 years for the eccentricity as well as for the climatic precession, with an additional component at around 930 years for the eccentricity and around 840 years for the climatic precession. Periodicities at 2.67, 3.8, 5.9, 8.0, 9.3, 11.9, 14.7, 18.6, 29, 135, 250 and 840 vr are also shown for the obliquity. Spectral analyses of the daily July mid-month insolation at 65-degrees-N show essentially the same periodicities as the climatic precession and the obliquity, i.e. 2.67, 3.98, 5.92, 8.1, 11.9, 15.7, 18.6, 29, 40, 61 and around 900 years. Finally a wider analysis of the insolation pattern was performed related to the large periodicity band of the insolation time series for the solstices and the equinoxes for 7 different latitudes. In equatorial latitudes the insolation variance is largely explained by precession. But precession dominates everywhere with the obliquity signal being stronger at polar latitudes at the solstices. The amplitudes of the insolation change at these frequencies is of the order of 0.2 Wm-2 at the maximum

Climate response to the Samalas volcanic eruption in 1257 revealed by proxy records

The eruption of Samalas in Indonesia in 1257 ranks among the largest sulfur-rich eruptions of the Common Era with sulfur deposition in ice cores reaching twice the volume of the Tambora eruption in 1815. Sedimentological analyses of deposits confirm the exceptional size of the event, which had both an eruption magnitude and a volcanic explosivity index of 7. During the Samalas eruption, more than 40 km$^3$ of dense magma was expelled and the eruption column is estimated to have reached altitudes of 43 km. However, the climatic response to the Samalas event is debated since climate model simulations generally predict a stronger and more prolonged surface air cooling of Northern Hemisphere summers than inferred from tree-ring-based temperature reconstructions. Here, we draw on historical archives, ice-core data and tree-ring records to reconstruct the spatial and temporal climate response to the Samalas eruption. We find that 1258 and 1259 experienced some of the coldest Northern Hemisphere summers of the past millennium. However, cooling across the Northern Hemisphere was spatially heterogeneous. Western Europe, Siberia and Japan experienced strong cooling, coinciding with warmer-than-average conditions over Alaska and northern Canada. We suggest that in North America, volcanic radiative forcing was modulated by a positive phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. Contemporary records attest to severe famines in England and Japan, but these began prior to the eruption. We conclude that the Samalas eruption aggravated existing crises, but did not trigger the famines.Era.Net RUSplus project ELVECS (SNF project number: IZRPZ0_164735