Temporal Resolution Controls on Climate-Signal Preservation in Quaternary Palaeoclimate Records

Monmohan Gogoi; Diganta Bhuyan

doi:10.63335/j.hp.2026.0046

Highlights

Generalized framework quantifies archive-specific temporal filtering.
Effective temporal resolution governs climate-signal preservation.
Representative archives demonstrate practical framework application.
Temporal bandwidth enables quantitative proxy comparison.
Framework improves proxy synthesis and model-data integration

Abstract

Geological archives provide the primary evidence for reconstructing Quaternary climate variability, yet differences among proxy records are commonly interpreted using broad archive categories. Such classifications can obscure the measurable controls governing the recording and preservation of climate signals. Here, a generalized quantitative framework is developed in which temporal resolution and signal fidelity depend primarily on accumulation rate, sampling integration scale, post-depositional mixing, diffusive smoothing, and ecological response time. Analytical formulations and numerical forward experiments show that increasing effective temporal integration attenuates abrupt events, broadens transition durations, suppresses high-frequency variability, redistributes variance toward longer timescales, and can generate apparent timing offsets between records responding to the same forcing. The framework further shows that uncertainty reduction in multi-record composites is limited when errors are correlated. Representative applications to Greenland ice cores, Chinese speleothems, and North Atlantic marine sediments show how readily available archive metadata can be translated into first-order estimates of effective temporal resolution, climate-signal attenuation, duration inflation, and preserved climatic bandwidth. These results indicate that Quaternary proxy records should be interpreted as filtered representations of climate variability whose characteristics depend on archive-response processes. Explicit integration of effective temporal resolution is essential for cross-archive comparison, proxy synthesis, and model-data evaluation.

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