Quantification of the seasonal bias in pollen-based paleoclimate reconstructions in reality and an ideal climate model world

This proposal aims to strengthen a newly established cooperation between the EECRG at the University of Bergen and ECUS at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Potsdam. Both groups have strong and complementary interests in validating palaeoclimate proxies so th at reconstructions of past climate can be more accurate. The EECRG has expertise in evaluating quantitative palaeoclimate reconstructions; ECUS has expertise in Holocene-length model simulations of climate and vegetation and the impact of seasonality. S eaB will fund reciprocal visits between Bergen and Potsdam for faculty staff and post-docs to carry out the project described below and learn the skills of the other group. Recent work has shown a mismatch between climate models that show warming over th e last 10,000 years and climate proxy data that show a cooling over most of this period. The discrepancy is probably partly due to seasonal biases of the proxies. SeaB will work to quantify the seasonal bias in pollen-climate reconstructions using both ob served datasets of modern and fossil pollen and an ideal climate-vegetation model. The outcomes of this work will be published in an open-access peer-reviewed international journal and the software generated will be included in an R package. Hopefully, a proposal arising from this collabotation will be submitted to the 2015 KLIMAFORSK call.