Improved understanding of past climatic variability from early daily European Instrumental Sources

Objective

Objectives :

To assess correction and homogenisation protocols for
early daily instrumental records and produce guidelines
for the quality-assessment, correction and homogenisation
of early instrumental records. To recover data; produce
daily pressure and temperature series for carefully
selected examples from European archives. To characterise
climate variability and determine teleconnection
behaviour across Europe.


Brief Description of the Research Project :


There is a growing interest in climate variability in
Europe, not only because of the "detection" issue, but
also because of the realisation of the importance of the
links between circulation in the North Atlantic Ocean and
climate in Europe.This project intends to describe the
evolution of the climate in Europe and its variability
over the last quarter of a Millenium, by analysis of
hitherto unexploited daily records of air temperature and
pressure from a number of sites across Europe, i.e.
Padova and Milan (Italy), S. Sernando/Cadiz (Spain),
Brussels/Uccle (Belgium), Uppsala and Stockholm (Sweden).
It intends also to augment the newly-produced series with
currently available series (from England, Spain, Czech
Republic, Russia) and publish all data on CD-ROM.

Climatic analysis will include the following: Examination
of high-frequency temperature variability (days-to-seasons) over Europe in order to test the notion of a
decline in high-frequency variability as a response to
anthropogenic influences. Examination of the time-behaviour of the European growing season (very important
for agriculture). Analysis of extreme (high and low)
temperatures (an expected response to anthropogenic
effects). Time-series analysis in order to assess whether
there is any evidence of quasi-regular multi-decadal
oscillations (indicated from ocean model experiments).
Circulation indices over Europe and their relations with
other features of climate variability.

The goals will be reached by means of a close inter-European interaction between specialists in relevant
fields, e.g. historical meteorological instruments and
practices, local climate at the various observation
sites, statistical data analysis, homogeneity testing of
meteorological data series, and climatic analyses in time
and space. The production of the time series will be
undertaken in the most rigorous way devisable through
combinations of expert judgement, use of metadata, and
the application of sophisticated objective techniques.
This will represent a major inter-disciplinary effort,
but the overwhelming priority is to exploit the series to
improve our understanding of the nature and processes of
climate variability and to service the modelling
community.

Programme(s)

• FP4-ENV 2C - Specific programme of research and technological development in the field of environment and climate, 1994-1998

Topic(s)

• 010103 - Climate variability, simulation of climate and prediction of climate change

Funding Scheme

CSC - Cost-sharing contracts

Coordinator

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF ITALY

Address

Corso Stati Uniti 4
35127 Padova
Italy

Participants (8)

Fondazione Salvatore Maugeri Clinica del Lavoro e della Riabilitazione

Italy

Address

Via Svizzera 16
35127 Padova

Institut Royal Météorologique de Belgique

Belgium

Address

3,Avenue Circulaire
1180 Bruxelles

STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITET

Sweden

Address

10691 Stockholm

UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA

United Kingdom

Address

University Plain
NR4 7TJ Norwich

UPPSALA UNIVERSITY

Sweden

Address

6,Villavägen 16
752 36 Uppsala

Universitat de Barcelona

Spain

Address

S/n,baldiri Reixac
08028 Barcelona

Universiteit Gent

Belgium

Address

2,Blandijnberg 2
9000 Gent

Università degli Studi di Milano

Italy

Address

16,Via Celoria
20133 Milano