# Data and Tools for ARTS at the World Data Center for Paleoclimatology

# C. Mark Eakin

World Data Center for Paleoclimatology / NOAA Paleoclimatology Program

NOAA/NGDC, 325 Broadway E/GCx3, Boulder, CO 80305-3328

Voice: 303-497-6172, Fax: 303-497-6513, e-mail: <mark.eakin@noaa.gov>

## Introduction

To understand past and potential future changes in the earth system,
climate researchers need access to data that represent the full range of
climate variability paleodata. The Annual Records of Tropical Systems
(ARTS) initiative promotes the synthesis of paleoclimatic data with
instrumental and modeling perspectives to address uncertainties in our
understanding of tropical climate variability and its impacts. The goals
of the ARTS program are to:

-   document and understand the behavior of the tropical
    ocean-atmosphere system and its teleconnections, with seasonal to
    annual resolution, over the past several centuries; and

-   assess the stability of tropical climate systems and their
    teleconnections, as the background climate and associated forcing
    phenomena change, over seasons to centuries (Dunbar and Cole 1999).

Achievement of these goals requires a spatially distributed network of
data from various proxy records.

# [The World Data Center for Paleoclimatology]{.underline}

A unique achievement of the International Geosphere-Biosphere
Programme - Past Global Changes programme (IGBP-PAGES) has been the
development of a successful global paleoenvironmental data management
system. The coordination of scientific and database efforts around the
world is essential and provides a key resource for ARTS and other PAGES
activities. The World Data Center for Paleoclimatology, Boulder
(WDC-Paleoclimatology) serves as the major repository for data from a
variety of programs and activities within IGBP-PAGES. Hosted by the NOAA
Paleoclimatology Program at the National Geophysical Data Center,
WDC-Paleoclimatology is home to the PAGES International Paleo-Data
System.

The availability of a widely distributed set of paleoclimatic data has
enabled a new generation of paleoclimatic data analyses. Data from
corals, tree-rings, marine and lake sediments and others are providing
indices of large-scale climate variability. Some examples of targeted
phenomena include the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and its
teleconnections (Cole and Cook, 1998), the Indian Monsoon, volcanic
eruptions, and not-yet-well-defined decadal-scale patterns such as the
Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Our understanding of modern changes in
global climate relative to the last several hundred years rely on
analyses of multi-proxy paleodata (e.g. Mann et al. 1998) primarily
available through the public data archives at WDC-Paleo.

# [Data Holdings & Tools]{.underline}

While the WDC-Paleoclimatology archives and distributes data from a wide
spectrum of time scales, an essential focus is to promote the
development of paleoclimate archives of the highest resolution data.
Annually resolved data, typically with absolute age control are
necessary to reconstruct climate over recent centuries and extend our
climate record into pre-instrumental periods. Among the annually
controlled data essential to the ARTS program are over 70 coral records,
a dozen tree-ring records and a half-dozen annually dated ice and marine
sediment cores.

![](media/image1.png){width="4.097222222222222in"
height="2.0416666666666665in"}

> **Figure 1**. Annually resolved, tropical paleoclimatic records
> available from the WDC-Paleoclimatology. Data are displayed using the
> new WebMapper browse and visualization tool. Key: Red circles =
> corals, blue triangles = marine sediments, blue circles = ice cores,
> green triangles = trees. Data are available at
> <http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/data.html>.

Recently developed tools make these data more readily accessible. The
ARTS-related data in Figure 1, along with thousands of other records,
can now be easily browsed using the recently implemented WebMapper tool.
A CD-ROM featuring these data and a multi-proxy prototype of WebMapper
will be distributed at the First ARTS Science Meeting and will soon be
implemented on the WDC-Paleoclimatology website. New services to provide
data in geographical information system (GIS) shape files will allow
users to easily work with other data sets at the same time.

# 

# [Large-scale research]{.underline}

Using coral ^18^O data, many of which are easily accessible via the
WDC-Paleoclimatology, researchers are helping to quantify variability
associated with large-scale climatic phenomena. Evans et al. (2000) used
paleodata to reconstruct large-scale climate patterns, including those
of the El Niño -- Southern Oscillation system and the global
![](media/image2.pct)signal of climate change.

**Figure 2.** First empirical orthogonal function (EOF) of coral ^18^O
data anomalies (in dimensionless units); colors indicate 90%
significance. The first EOF corresponds to the ENSO climate pattern.

Future use of coral data and other paleo proxies will enable the
reconstruction of changing patterns in these patterns through time
during the pre-instrumental period. Results from this work may tell ,
for instance, if the apparently unusual activity of ENSO in the past few
decades is truly unusual, or occurred during other epochs in the recent
past. Obviously, such studies are more accurate if their data come from
a well-designed, well-populated network of sites.

## ARTS Needs Networks of Data

At the 1996 ARTS workshop (Dunbar and Cole 1999), participants
identified a need to reconstruct indices of large-scale, tropical
climate systems into pre-instrumental periods. Networks of
well-calibrated, multi-century proxy records are needed to create
spatially gridded research products to drive or test general circulation
model simulations. Networks of synchronous data are similarly needed to
reconstruct Holocene and last-glacial intervals.

A recent editorial (Nature 2001) pointed out that "the community must
deliver more by way of systematic deposition of its data". While some
funding agencies require paleoclimatic data to be deposited in archives
(Alverson and Eakin 2001), it is essential that scientists recognize the
importance of placing their data into public archives so that they are
available to the community as a whole. By making these data available,
ARTS researchers conducting research over large spatial scales can
compare data from new sites with others across the network.

All investigators are urged to contribute their data to the
WDC-Paleoclimatology promptly at the time of publication. However, it is
not only the longest records that are needed. The typically overlooked,
short pilot records from the last fifty years or more can help
researchers develop the best paleoclimatic reconstructions. Your
contribution of short records is eagerly sought as well.

## References

Alverson, K. and C. M. Eakin, 2001. Making sure that the world's
palaeodata do not get buried. Nature, 412:269

Cole, J.E., and E.R. Cook, 1998. The changing relationship between ENSO
variability and moisture balance in the continental United States.
Geophysical Research Letters, 25: 4529-4532.

Dunbar, R.B. and J.E. Cole, eds., 1999. Annual Records of Tropical
Systems (ARTS): Recommendations of Research, PAGES Workshop Report
Series 99-1.

Evans, M.N., A. Kaplan and M.A. Cane, 2000. Intercomparison of coral
oxygen isotope data and historical sea surface temperature (SST):
Potential for coral-based SST field reconstructions, Paleoceanography,
15(5): 551-563.

Mann, M.E., R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes, 1998. Global temperature
patterns over the past five centuries: Implications for anthropogenic
and natural forcing of climate, Nature, 392: 779-787.

Nature Editorial, Make the most of palaeodata. Nature 411: 1.