High-resolution field reconstructions of Mediterranean hydroclimate during the last millennium

The Mediterranean region is projected to experience severe drying trends and more extreme hydroclimate events as a consequence of anthropogenic climate change over the next century.   In some places, this signal may have already emerged from natural variability.  Here we provide content for recent and future changes using new high-resolution spatial reconstructions of multiple hydroclimate fields from a tree-ring network that spans the last millennium. We identify and attribute the differences between existing Old World Drought Atlas (OWDA) and our reconstructions and identify regions that would continue to benefit from expanding the proxy network in space and time.  We also reexamine previous conclusions about the recent severity of drought in the context of earlier centuries, we isolate a purported mode of large-scale zonal synchrony across the region, and we provide multiple perspectives on historical records of Little Ice Age droughts in the Eastern Mediterranean.  Long millennium-length hydroclimate reconstructions in the Mediterranean also provide an opportunity to understand frequency-dependent variability in the large-scale ocean-atmosphere circulation that influences the climate of the region.