Earth System Diagnostics - Publications
Recent publications:
2026
Dolman, Andrew M., Mara Y. McPartland, Thomas Felis, and Thomas Laepple. 2026. ‘Strontium to Calcium Ratio and Oxygen Isotopic Coral Records Can Exaggerate Past Decadal Tropical Climate Variability’. Communications Earth & Environment 7 (1): 308. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03465-4.
Skiba, V., L. Ackermann, N. Hirsch, et al. 2026. ‘Enhancing Climate Variability in Earth System Models through Paleo-Informed Nudging of Sea Surface Temperatures’. Environmental Research: Climate 5 (1): 015025. https://doi.org/10.1088/2752-5295/ae3a08.
2025
Shaju, Kshema, Thomas Laepple, Nora Hirsch, and Peter Zaspel. 2025. ‘Ice Borehole Thermometry: Sensor Placement Using Greedy Optimal Sampling’. Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems 14 (2): 459–74. https://doi.org/10.5194/gi-14-459-2025.
McPartland, Mara Y., Thomas Münch, Andrew M. Dolman, Raphaël Hébert, and Thomas Laepple. 2025. ‘The Colors of Proxy Noise’. Climate of the Past 21 (11): 1917–31. https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-1917-2025.
Shaw, Fyntan, Thomas Münch, Vasileios Gkinis, and Thomas Laepple. 2025. ‘The Impact of Measurement Precision on the Resolvable Resolution of Ice Core Water Isotope Reconstructions’. The Cryosphere 19 (10): 4913–28. https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-4913-2025.
Schild, Laura, Peter Ewald, Chenzhi Li, Raphaël Hébert, Thomas Laepple, and Ulrike Herzschuh. 2025. ‘LegacyVegetation: Northern Hemisphere Reconstruction of Past Plant Cover and Total Tree Cover from Pollen Archives of the Last 14 Kyr’. Earth System Science Data 17 (5): 2007–33. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-2007-2025.
Rietkerk, Max, Vanessa Skiba, Els Weinans, Raphaël Hébert, and Thomas Laepple. 2025. ‘Ambiguity of Early Warning Signals for Climate Tipping Points’. Nature Climate Change 15 (5): 479–88. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02328-8.
Laepple, T., T. Münch, N. Hirsch, F. Shaw, and M. Hörhold. 2025. ‘Limitations of Ice Cores in Reconstructing Temperature Seasonality’. Nature 637 (8044): E1–6. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08181-7.
Dallmayr, Remi, Thomas Laepple, Johannes Freitag, et al. 2025. ‘Topographic Effect Creates Non-Climatic Variations in Ice-Core Based Temperature Records of the Last Millennium in Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica’. Geophysical Research Letters 52 (9): e2025GL115124. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL115124.
Dolman, A. M., and T. Laepple. 2025. ‘Temperature Variability on Coral Reefs Versus Gridded SST – The Long and the Short of It’. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 26 (9): e2025GC012351. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GC012351.
Hirsch, Nora, Andrew M. Dolman, Thomas Münch, and Thomas Laepple. 2025. ‘Greenland Ice Core Isotope Variability Strongly Influenced by Systematic Changes in Depositional Noise’. Geophysical Research Letters 52 (20): e2025GL116529. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL116529.
2024
Schild, Laura, Raphaël Hébert, Ulrike Herzschuh, and Thomas Laepple. 2024. ‘Lack of Evidence for Alternative Stable States in Northern Hemisphere Forests during the Past 8 Ka’. Environmental Research Letters 20 (1): 014013. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad9508.
Shaw, Fyntan, Andrew M. Dolman, Torben Kunz, Vasileios Gkinis, and Thomas Laepple. 2024. ‘Novel Approach to Estimate the Water Isotope Diffusion Length in Deep Ice Cores with an Application to Marine Isotope Stage 19 in the Dome C Ice Core’. The Cryosphere 18 (8): 3685–98. https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-3685-2024.
Kunz, Torben, and Thomas Laepple. 2024. ‘Effective Spatial Degrees of Freedom of Natural Temperature Variability as a Function of Frequency’. Journal of Climate. Journal of Climate 37 (8): 2505–18. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-23-0040.1.
McPartland, M. Y., A. M. Dolman, and T. Laepple. 2024. ‘Separating Common Signal From Proxy Noise in Tree Rings’. Geophysical Research Letters 51 (13): e2024GL109282. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GL109282.
Schild, Laura, Peter Ewald, Chenzhi Li, Raphaël Hébert, Thomas Laepple, and Ulrike Herzschuh. 2025. ‘LegacyVegetation: Northern Hemisphere Reconstruction of Past Plant Cover and Total Tree Cover from Pollen Archives of the Last 14 Kyr’. Earth System Science Data 17 (5): 2007–33. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-2007-2025.
Zuhr, Alexandra M., Sonja Wahl, Hans Christian Steen-Larsen, et al. 2024. ‘Spatial and Temporal Stable Water Isotope Data from the Upper Snowpack at the EastGRIP Camp Site, NE Greenland, Sampled in Summer 2018’. Earth System Science Data 16 (4): 1861–74. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-1861-2024.
2023
Shaw, Fyntan, Andrew Mark Dolman, Torben Kunz, Vasileios Gkinis, and Thomas Laepple. 2023. ‘Novel Approach to Estimate the Water Isotope Diffusion Length in Deep Ice Cores with an Application to MIS 19 in the EPICA Dome C Ice Core’. EGUsphere, December 7, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2549.
Jonkers, Lukas, Thomas Laepple, Marina C. Rillo, et al. 2023. ‘Strong Temperature Gradients in the Ice Age North Atlantic Ocean Revealed by Plankton Biogeography’. Nature Geoscience 16 (12): 12. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01328-7.
Laepple, T., E. Ziegler, N. Weitzel, et al. 2023. ‘Regional but Not Global Temperature Variability Underestimated by Climate Models at Supradecadal Timescales’. Nature Geoscience 16 (11): 11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01299-9.
Hirsch, Nora, Alexandra Zuhr, Thomas Münch, et al. 2023. ‘Stratigraphic Noise and Its Potential Drivers across the Plateau of Dronning Maud Land, East Antarctica’. The Cryosphere 17 (10): 4207–21. https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-4207-2023.
Hörhold, M., T. Münch, S. Weißbach, et al. 2023. ‘Modern Temperatures in Central–North Greenland Warmest in Past Millennium’. Nature 613 (7944): 7944. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05517-z.
Hathorne, Ed, Andrew M. Dolman, and Thomas Laepple. 2023. ‘Assessing Seasonal and Inter-Annual Marine Sediment Climate Proxy Data’. Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology 38 (10): e2023PA004649. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023PA004649.
Hébert, Raphaël, Laura Schild, Thomas Laepple, and Ulrike Herzschuh. 2023. ‘Biome- and Timescale-Dependence of Holocene Vegetation Variability in the Northern Hemisphere’. Ecology and Evolution 13 (10): e10585. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.10585.
Zuhr, Alexandra M., Sonja Wahl, Hans Christian Steen-Larsen, Maria Hörhold, Hanno Meyer, and Thomas Laepple. 2023. ‘A Snapshot on the Buildup of the Stable Water Isotopic Signal in the Upper Snowpack at EastGRIP on the Greenland Ice Sheet’. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface 128 (2): e2022JF006767. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022JF006767.
2022
Hébert, R., Herzschuh, U., & Laepple, T. (2022). Millennial-scale climate variability over land overprinted by ocean temperature fluctuations. Nature Geoscience, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-01056-4
Laepple, T., Shakun, J., He, F., & Marcott, S. (2022). Concerns of assuming linearity in the reconstruction of thermal maxima. Nature, 607(7920), E12–E14. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04831-w
Zuhr, A. M., Dolman, A. M., Ho, S. L., Groeneveld, J., Löwemark, L., Grotheer, H., et al. (2022). Age-Heterogeneity in Marine Sediments Revealed by Three-Dimensional High-Resolution Radiocarbon Measurements. Frontiers in Earth Science, 10. Retrieved from
https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/feart.2022.871902
2021
Kunz, T., & Laepple, T. (2021). Frequency-Dependent Estimation of Effective Spatial Degrees of Freedom. Journal of Climate, 34(18), 7373–7388. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0228.1
Hébert, R., Rehfeld, K., & Laepple, T. (2021). Comparing estimation techniques for timescale-dependent scaling of climate variability in paleoclimate time series. Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics Discussions, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-2021-7
Zuhr, A. M., Münch, T., Steen-Larsen, H. C., Hörhold, M., & Laepple, T. (2021). Local-scale deposition of surface snow on the Greenland ice sheet. The Cryosphere, 15(10), 4873–4900. https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-4873-2021
Münch, T., Werner, M., & Laepple, T. (2021). How precipitation intermittency sets an optimal sampling distance for temperature reconstructions from Antarctic ice cores. Climate of the Past, 17(4), 1587–1605. https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-1587-2021
Dolman, A. M., Kunz, T., Groeneveld, J., & Laepple, T. (2021). A spectral approach to estimating the timescale-dependent uncertainty of paleoclimate records – Part 2: Application and interpretation. Climate of the Past, 17(2), 825–841. https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-825-2021
Dolman, A. M., Groeneveld, J., Mollenhauer, G., Ho, S. L., & Laepple, T. (2021). Estimating Bioturbation From Replicated Small-Sample Radiocarbon Ages. Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, 36(7), e2020PA004142.
https://doi.org/10.1029/2020PA004142
2020
Casado, M., Münch, T., & Laepple, T. (2020). Climatic information archived in ice cores: impact of intermittency and diffusion on the recorded isotopic signal in Antarctica. Climate of the Past, 16(4), 1581–1598. https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-1581-2020
Franzke, C. L. E., Barbosa, S., Blender, R., Fredriksen, H.-B., Laepple, T., Lambert, F., et al. (2020). The Structure of Climate Variability Across Scales. Reviews of Geophysics, 58(2), e2019RG000657. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019RG000657
Kunz, T., Dolman, A. M., & Laepple, T. (2020). A spectral approach to estimating the timescale-dependent uncertainty of paleoclimate records – Part 1: Theoretical concept. Climate of the Past, 16(4), 1469–1492.
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-1469-2020
2019
Groeneveld, J., Ho, S. L., Mackensen, A., Mohtadi, M., & Laepple, T. (2019). Deciphering the variability in Mg/Ca and stable oxygen isotopes of individual foraminifera. Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, 0(ja). https://doi.org/10.1029/2018PA003533
Conference Presentations and Posters
See also our Newest Research Highlights