O18

One of the hidden assumptions of proxy reconstructions, as carried out by IPCC authors, is that each “proxy” has a linear relationship to temperature plus relatively low-order red noise. Under such circumstances, the noise will cancel out in a linear combination of proxies (reconstruction) and a “signal” will emerge. However, I’ve never seen any author discuss the validity of this assumption, let alone establish the validity.

PAGES2K Arctic introduced a lake sediment d18O series from Kepler Lake, Alaska that hadn’t been used in previous studies. Although O18 data is a workhorse of paleoclimate, O18 data from Alaska (or, for that matter, anywhere in the Arctic hemisphere between 90E and 90W – going east) is very scarce. Thus, the appearance of a new d18O series from Alaska is of considerable interest. I’ll show why by comparing the new data to other O18 information: