The primary objective of this project is to create and investigate a spatially seamless climate field reconstruction (CFR) for the sea surface temperature in the North Atlantic realm covering the past 2000 years. The reconstruction skills of two climate field reconstruction techniques will be evaluated,  the "BARCAST" (the Bayesian Algorithm for Reconstructing Climate Anomalies in Space and Time) and the proxy surrogate reconstruction method. Focusing on the North Atlantic domain is conditioned by an overall importance of the region for influencing the climate on the global scale.

The model assumptions of the BARCAST CFR technique represent the most important criticality of this project, since the methodology design and past use has been focused on land surface temperatures only. Land and sea surface temperatures typically exhibit differences in the covariance properties both in time and space. The proposed reconstructions are expected to be of interest for the wider climate community. Having the oceanic domain integrated in the framework of the project will provide means for the analysis of past changes in marine to terrestrial teleconnections in the North Atlantic realm, as well as the assessment and improvements of existing seasonal reconstructions of major climate indices, e.g. the North Atlantic Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation for the last 2000 years.