Accurate estimation of central tropical Pacific (CTP) climate variability on interannual to centennial time scales is required for robust projections of future global climate trends. Here we outline an approach that blends instrumental and coral proxy observations to yield a continuous, monthly resolved record of climate evolution in the CTP spanning the past 160 years. We concatenate coral oxygen isotope (δ¹⁸O) records from multiple living and fossil corals collected from Fanning Island (4°N, 160°W) and Palmyra Island (5°N; 162°W) located in the heart of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. We use the regularized expectation maximization (RegEM) method to impute missing data across short gaps of 5 to 23 years within and beyond individual coral records. The resulting monthly resolved Fanning/Palmyra Island climate record spans continuously from 1863 to 2016 and provides an example of how extended time series can be built from shorter coral segments. The extended record highlights the strong trend toward warmer and wetter mean conditions in late twentieth century, in agreement with the majority of climate model hindcast simulations. The continuous reconstruction also enables a direct comparison of four exceptionally strong El Niño events (1877–1878, 1940–1941, 1997–1998, and 2015–2016). Three of these very strong El Niño events in the CTP featured a precursor warm event in the prior year and that may have favored the development of a strong El Niño event.

中文翻译：

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从范宁和巴尔米拉岛珊瑚重建的自19世纪中叶以来中央热带太平洋气候的连续记录：以珊瑚数据再分析为例

为了对未来的全球气候趋势进行有力的预测，需要在年际到百年尺度上准确估计中部热带太平洋（CTP）的气候变化。在这里，我们概述了一种将工具观测和珊瑚代理观测相结合的方法，以得出过去160年CTP中气候演变的连续，每月解析记录。我们串接珊瑚氧同位素（δ ¹⁸O）来自在厄尔尼诺-南方涛动中心的范宁岛（4°N，160°W）和Palmyra岛（5°N; 162°W）收集的多种生物和化石珊瑚的记录。我们使用正规化的期望最大化（RegEM）方法，在单个珊瑚记录内外超出5到23年的短差距内估算缺失数据。由此产生的芬宁/帕尔米拉岛每月解析气候记录连续从1863年到2016年，并提供了一个示例，说明如何从较短的珊瑚段中建立较长的时间序列。扩展的记录凸显了与二十世纪后期大多数气候模型后验模拟结果相吻合的趋向于温暖和潮湿的平均条件的强烈趋势。连续重建还可以直接比较四个异常强烈的厄尔尼诺事件（1877年至1878年，1940-1941年，1997-1998年和2015-2016年）。CTP中这些非常强烈的厄尔尼诺事件中的三起是前一年的暖场事件，这可能有利于大力发展厄尔尼诺事件。