Regional patterns of hydroclimate variability in southeastern Australia over the past 1200 years

Abstract

Long, continuous palaeoclimate records provide an opportunity to extend knowledge of decadal to multi-decadal scale climate variability beyond the limit of instrumental records. In this study, quality-controlled proxy records from southeastern Australia are examined for coherent variability during the Common Era, with age uncertainty for each record estimated using iterative age modeling. Site-level empirical orthogonal functions (EOFs) are derived from multivariate records for the purpose of objective comparison of climate signals between sites without selection bias. A regional Monte Carlo EOF (MCEOF) analysis is conducted on combined time-uncertain single-proxy records and site-level EOFs..