Palaeoclimate proxies developed from biological and geological archives are key to understanding past climate beyond the limits of instrumental observation, allowing robust local, regional, and global palaeoclimate records to be produced from terrestrial and marine settings. Proxy records reconstruct synoptic climate systems of the past, such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation or North Atlantic Oscillation, but are also used by climate and ice-sheet modelers for validation.

Despite their extensive use in paleoclimate studies, proxy reconstructions contain uncertainty that is often not presented in explicit, clear terms. Uncertainty in proxy data arises from numerous places, including 1) the precision of measurement during analysis, 2) the error or ambiguity involved in descriptive or non-analytically derived proxy measurements, 3) and the uncertainty of calibrating any particular proxy with respect to climate, to name a few. Whilst such uncertainties are impossible to remove, the way in which they are reported is vital for published studies. The availability of proxy data with the growing use of databases and online data repositories has presented new challenges for proxy to proxy comparisons, which are typically used to develop environmental interpretations, given the increasing number of experts and non-experts with data access. This session focuses on approaching these proxy uncertainties head-on in an attempt to provide an honest understanding of our current knowledge base, and develop strategies to improve the uncertainties and the way in which they are reported.

We invite contributions which cover the below points or any other related questions related to proxy uncertainties developed using, but not limited to lacustrine sediment, marine sediment, speleothems, tree-rings, glacial-geologic, and ice core archives:

• Improvement in the quantification and reporting of proxy uncertainty in palaeo studies both for established and novel proxy techniques.
• Examples of how uncertainty that is inherently qualitative in nature can be quantified.
• The increased complexity which results from the application of myriad proxy methods and inconsistent methodologies.
• How bias can be dealt with in palaeoproxies, especially when used for comparison or synthesis studies.
• Methods by which cross-disciplinary research, which often utilizes numerous proxies, can robustly synthesize different proxy records.
• What do climate modelers need in order to robustly validate palaeoclimate model simulations?

This session is sponsored by the Advanced Climate Dynamics Summer School, through the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research at the University of Bergen.