Over the past two decades, the dendroclimate community has produced various annually resolved, warm seasontemperature reconstructions for the extratropical Northern Hemisphere. Here we compare these tree-ring basedreconstructions back to 831 CE and present a set of basic metrics to provide guidance for non-specialists on theirinterpretation and use. We specifically draw attention to(i)the imbalance between (numerous) short and (few)long site chronologies incorporated into the hemispheric means,(ii)the beneficial effects of including maximumlatewood density chronologies in the recently published reconstructions,(iii)a decrease in reconstructioncovariance prior to 1400 CE, and(iv)the varying amplitudes and trends of reconstructed temperatures over thepast 1100 years. Whereas the reconstructions agree on several important features, such as warmth duringmedieval times and cooler temperatures in the 17th and 19th centuries, they still exhibit substantial differencesduring 13th and 14th centuries. We caution users who might consider combining the reconstructions throughsimple averaging that all reconstructions share some of the same underlying tree-ring data, and provide fourrecommendations to guide future efforts to better understand past millennium temperature variability.