We present a 2000-year pollen-based reconstruction of total annual precipitation (ANNP) for North America. Application of Local Indices of Spatial Association (LISA) permitted us to distinguish regional large-scale hydroclimate patterns from local site-specific conditions across North America during this time period. Century-scale filtered pollen-based reconstructions are more spatially coherent than unfiltered reconstructions, allowing for better identification of past hydroclimate patterns across North America. Similar spatial patterns dominated during both the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ (MWP; 950–1250 CE) and Roman Warm Period (RWP; 50 BCE–150 CE), although the MWP was generally drier than the RWP. In contrast, hydroclimate changes during Dark Ages Cold Period (DAC; 350–650 CE) and the ‘Little Ice Age’ (LIA; 1550–1850 CE) show opposing patterns across the western and eastern boreal region of North America. During warm periods, eastern and western boreal regions had similar moisture condition, whereas during cold periods, the eastern boreal region was relatively wet and the west was dry.
AnselinL (1995) Local indicators of spatial association – LISA. Geographical Analysis27(2): 93–115.
2.
BartleinPJHarrisonSPBrewerSet al (2011) Pollen-based continental climate reconstructions at 6 and 21 ka: A global synthesis. Climate Dynamics37(3–4): 775–802.
3.
BirdBWWilsonJJGilhoolyWPIIIet al (2017) Midcontinental native American population dynamics and late Holocene hydroclimate extremes. Nature Scientific Report7: 41628.
4.
BoothRKNotaroMJacksonSTet al (2006) Widespread drought episodes in the western Great Lakes region during the past 2000 years: Geographic extent and potential mechanisms. Earth and Planetary Science Letters242(3): 415–427.
5.
BrownKJClarkJSGrimmECet al (2005) Fire cycles in North American interior grasslands and their relation to prairie drought. PNAS102(25): 8865–8870.
6.
CheddadiRYuGGuiotJet al (1997) The climate of Europe 6000 years ago. Climate Dynamics13(1): 1–9.
7.
ChristiansenB (2011) Reconstructing the NH mean temperature: Can underestimation of trends and variability be avoided?Journal of Climate24(3): 674–692.
8.
ChristiansenBLjungqvistFC (2012) The extra-tropical northern hemisphere temperature in the last two millennia: Reconstructions of low-frequency variability. Climate of the past8(2): 765–786.
9.
ClarkJSGrimmECDonovanJJet al (2002) Drought cycles and landscape responses to past aridity on prairies of the northern great plains, USA. Ecology83(3): 595–601.
10.
CookERWoodhouseCAEakinCMet al (2004) Long-term aridity changes in the western United States. Science306(5698): 1015–1018.
11.
D’ArrigoRDJacobyGC (1991) A 1000-year record of winter precipitation from northwestern New Mexico, USA: A reconstruction from tree-rings and its relation to El Niño and the southern oscillation. The Holocene1(2): 95–101.
12.
DettingerMDCayanDRDiazHFet al (1998) North-south precipitation patterns in western North America on interannual-to-decadal timescales. Journal of Climate11(12): 3095–3111.
13.
DiazHFTrigoRHughesMKet al (2011.) Spatial and temporal characteristics of climate in medieval times revisited. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society92(11): 1487–1500.
14.
EsperJFrankDCTimonenMet al (2012.) Orbital forcing of tree-ring data. Nature Climate Change2(12): 862–866.
15.
FedorovaITVolkovaYAVarlyguinDL (1994) World Vegetation Cover. Global ecosystems database version 2.0. Boulder, CO: USDOC/NOAA National Geophysical Data Center.
16.
FritzSCEngstromDRHaskellBJ (1994) ‘Little Ice Age’ aridity in the North American Great Plains: A high-resolution reconstruction of salinity fluctuations from Devils Lake, North Dakota, USA. The Holocene4(1): 69–73.
17.
FritzSCItoEYuZet al (2000) Hydrologic variation in the northern Great Plains during the last two millennia. Quaternary Research53(2): 175–184.
18.
GajewskiK (1988) Late-Holocene climate changes in eastern North America estimated from pollen data. Quaternary Research29: 255–262.
19.
GajewskiK (1993) The role of paleoecology in the study of global climatic change. Review of Paleobotany and Palynology79(1–2): 141–151.
20.
GajewskiK (2008) The global pollen database in biogeographical and paleoclimatic studies. Progress in Physical Geography32(4): 379–402.
21.
GajewskiKViauAE (2011) Abrupt climate changes during the Holocene across North America from pollen and paleolimnological records. In: RashidHPolyakLMosley-ThompsonE (eds) Abrupt Climate Change: Mechanisms, Patterns, and Impacts, Geophysical Monograph Series, vol. 193. Washington, DC: American Geophysical Union, pp. 161–171.
22.
GirardinMPTardifJCFlanniganMDet al (2006) Synoptic-scale atmospheric circulation and boreal Canada summer drought variability of the past three centuries. Journal of Climate19(10): 1922–1947.
HerweijerCSeagerRCookERet al. (2007) North American droughts of the last millennium from a gridded network of tree-ring data. Journal of Climate20
(7): 1353–1376.
26.
IPCC (2013) Climate change 2013: The physical science basis. In: StockerTFQinDPlattnerG-Ket al (eds) Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 15–35.
27.
IsaaksEHSrivastavaRH (1989) An Introduction to applied geostatistics. New York: Oxford University Press.
28.
JugginsSBirksHJB (2012) Quantitative environmental reconstructions from biological data. In: SmolPJBirksHJB (eds) Tracking Environmental Change Using Lake Sediments. Rotterdam: Springer, pp. 431–494.
29.
KrivoruchkoKGribovA (2014) Pragmatic Bayesian Kriging for non-stationary and moderately non-Gaussian data. In: Pardo-IgúzquizaEGuardiola-AlbertCHerediaJet al (eds) Mathematics of Planet Earth. Berlin: Springer, pp. 61–64.
30.
LaddMWayRGViauAE (2015) The impact of using different modern climate data sets in pollen-based paleoclimate reconstructions of North America. Quaternary Science Reviews112: 78–85.
31.
LeathersDJYarnalBPaleckiMA (1991) The Pacific/North American teleconnection pattern and United States climate. Part I: Regional temperature and precipitation associations. Journal of Climate4(5): 517–528.
32.
McCabeGJBetancourtJLGraySTet al (2008) Associations of multi-decadal sea-surface temperature variability with US drought. Quaternary International188(1): 31–40.
33.
McCabeGJPaleckiMABetancourtJL (2004) Pacific and Atlantic ocean influences on multidecadal drought frequency in the United States. PNAS101(12): 4136–4141.
34.
MacDonaldGM (2007) Severe and sustained drought in southern California and the west: Present conditions and insights from the past on causes and impacts. Quaternary International173: 87–100.
35.
MacDonaldGMCaseRA (2005) Variations in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation over the past millennium. Geophysical Research Letters. Epub ahead of print 20April. DOI: 10.1029/2005GL022478.
36.
MannMEZhangZRutherfordSet al (2009) Global signatures and dynamical origins of the Little Ice Age and medieval climate anomaly. Science326(5957): 1256–1260.
37.
OverpeckJTWebbTIIIPrenticeIC (1985) Quantitative interpretation of fossil pollen spectra: Dissimilarity coefficients and the method of modern analogs. Quaternary Research23(1): 87–108.
38.
PAGES 2k Consortium (2013) Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia. Nature Geoscience6(5): 339–346.
39.
SawadaM (2006) An open source implementation of the modern analog technique (MAT) within the R computing environment. Computers & Geosciences32(6): 818–833.
40.
SawadaMViauAEVettorettiGet al (2004) Comparison of North-American pollen-based temperature and global lake-status with CCCma AGCM2 output at 6 ka. Quaternary Science Reviews23(3): 225–244.
41.
ShiFYangBMairesseAet al (2013) Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction during the last millennium using multiple annual proxies. Climate Research56(3): 231–244.
42.
ShindellDTSchmidtGAMillerRLet al (2003) Volcanic and solar forcing of climate change during the preindustrial era. Journal of Climate16(24): 4094–4107.
43.
ShumanBNMarsicekJ (2016) The structure of Holocene climate change in Mid-latitude North America. Quaternary Science Review141: 38–51.
44.
StahleDWCleavelandMK (1992) Reconstruction and analysis of spring rainfall over the southeastern US for the past 1000 years. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society73(12): 1947–1961.
45.
StahleDWCookERCleavelandMKet al (2000) Tree-ring data document 16th century megadrought over North America. Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union81(12): 121–125.
46.
StahleDWFyeFKCookERet al (2007) Tree-ring reconstructed megadroughts over North America since CE 1300. Climatic Change83(1–2): 133–149.
47.
StineS (1994) Extreme and persistent drought in California and Patagonia during mediaeval times. Nature369(6481): 546–549.
48.
TrouetVTaylorAH (2010) Multi-century variability in the Pacific North American circulation pattern reconstructed from tree rings. Climate Dynamics35(6): 953–963.
49.
TrouetVDiazHFWahlERet al (2013) A 1500-year reconstruction of annual mean temperature for temperate North America on decadal-to-multidecadal time scales. Environmental Research Letters8(2): 024008.
50.
TrouetVEsperJGrahamNEet al (2009) Persistent positive North Atlantic Oscillation mode dominated the medieval climate anomaly. Science324(5923): 78–80.
51.
ViauAGajewskiK (2001) Holocene variations in the global hydrological cycle quantified by objective gridding of lake level databases. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres106: 31703–31716.
52.
ViauAEGajewskiK (2009) Reconstructing millennial-scale, regional paleoclimates of boreal Canada during the Holocene. Journal of Climate22(2): 316–330.
53.
ViauAEGajewskiKSawadaMCet al (2006) Millennial-scale temperature variations in North America during the Holocene. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. Epub ahead of print 6May. DOI: 10.1029/2005JD006031.
54.
ViauAEGajewskiKSawadaMCet al (2008) Low- and high-frequency climate variability in Beringia during the past 25,000 years. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences45(11): 1435–1453.
55.
ViauAELaddMGajewskiK (2012) The climate of North America during the past 2000 years reconstructed from pollen data. Global and Planetary Change84–85: 75–83.
56.
WangJEmile-GeayJGuillotDet al (2013) Evaluating climate field reconstruction techniques using improved emulations of real-world conditions. Climate of the past Discussions9: 3015–3060.
57.
WannerHBeerJBuetikoferJet al (2008) Mid-to Late-Holocene climate change: An overview. Quaternary Science Reviews27(19): 1791–1828.
58.
WhitmoreJGajewskiKSawadaMet al (2005) North American modern pollen database for multi-scale paleoecological and paleoclimatic applications. Quaternary Science Reviews24(16): 1828–1848.
59.
WilliamsJWShumanB (2008) Obtaining accurate and precise environmental reconstructions from the modern analog technique and North American surface pollen dataset. Quaternary Science Reviews27(7): 669–687.
60.
WilsonRD’ArrigoRBuckleyBet al (2007) A matter of divergence: Tracking recent warming at hemispheric scales using tree ring data. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. Epub ahead of print 16September. DOI: 10.1029/2006JD008318.
61.
YuBZwiersFW (2007) The impact of combined ENSO and PDO on the PNA climate: A 1,000-year climate modeling study. Climate Dynamics29(7–8): 837–851.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
