RETHINKING PALAEOCLIMATOLOGY

FOR SOCIETY

DECADAL will link Holocene decadal climate variability and near-term climate predictions by delivering unprecedented information about the decadal behaviour of North Atlantic climate dynamics and its impacts on the UK and European climate (e.g. floods and droughts, heat waves, fresh water ecosystems, etc.) over the last few millennia. Our research will combine annually-resolved proxy data and state of the art climate modelling to develop observational constraints and apply them to an ensemble of decadal climate predictions models. The overarching goal of the project is to help improve annual to decadal forecasts of future climate changes and their impacts on ecosystems.

Given the potential importance of decadal climate variability for informing short- and medium-term climate change strategies, the research is both co-designed and co-produced with partners in the policy sector and climate services to deliver practical information and data (i.e. format, resolution and scale) which meets the needs to address urgent policy relevant climate issues.

DECADAL has four main objectives:

1. To generate continuous, quantitative, annual proxy-based climate records from key annually-laminated lake sediment records in Europe and to reconstruct decadal variability and atmospheric circulation in the NA-European sector during the Holocene (the last 11,700 years).

2. To assess the spectral features and stationarity of atmospheric circulation in time and space, and testing links to forcing mechanisms (ocean variability, insolation, solar and volcanic forcing and greenhouse gases).

3. To combine proxy data and climate simulations to develop and test an emergent constraint framework to promote the linkage between palaeoclimatology and decadal prediction.

4. To develop the integration of (palaeo) climate data into policy following a co-production approach in which research influences policy and policy-relevant questions are designed into the research.

DECADAL is a muti-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary project that involves researchers from the UK, Finland, France, Germany and Spain. It began in August 2022 and will run for seven years. During this time, we will work for a better science-policy interface and will promote impact through research in palaeoclimatology.