Paleoclimate Proxies and the Benefits of Disunity

Abstract

Measuring the climates of the deep past requires use of paleoclimate proxies. I describe two proxy data and measurement practices, regarding proxy calibration and proxy data infrastructure. I document how at least some data and measurement practices in paleoclimatology are disunified: these practices do not involve intercalibration or otherwise statistical combination of multiple proxy records, and metadata necessary for proxy data to be reused or intercompared is often not provided. I argue that, perhaps counter-intuitively, this lack of standardization and unification of proxy data and measurements has several benefits, especially related to the management of error and uncertainty.