Hydroclimatic reconstructions over Europe and the Mediterranean

0433139 - ÚVGZ 2015 CH eng A1 - Journal Abstract
Luterbacher, J. - Werner, J. - Fleitmann, D. - Gonzales-Rouco, J. F. - McCarroll, D. - Wagner, S. - Zorita, E. - Goméz-Navarro, J. - Büntgen, Ulf - Esper, J.
Hydroclimatic reconstructions over Europe and the Mediterranean.
Past Global Changes Magazine. - (Zolitschka, B.; Pike, J.). s. 38. ISSN 1811-1602.
[Meeting of the Euro-Med2k Working Group. 25.03.2014-26.03.2014, Reading]
Institutional support: RVO:67179843
Keywords : water availability * climate change * climate model situations * hydroclimate
Subject RIV: EH - Ecology, Behaviour

The European-Mediterranean with its wealth of instrumental time series, natural climate archives, and documentary information allows reconstructing climatic changes of the past two millennia that help shed further light on changes in climate extremes and socio-economic impacts prior to the instrumental period.The PAGES Euro_Med 2k initiative has progressed in reviewing the currently available proxy information and in reconstructing past continental temperature at regional tocontinental scales. However, extremes in the water cycle (floods) and longer-term variations (droughts) are among the most serious environmental policy issues confronting societies. This workshop aims at (i) providing an overview of existing hydroclimatic proxy records in the European_Mediterraneanregion over the past 2000 years, and (ii) discussing the potential and limitations of documentary and natural proxies to reconstruct the full range of variations in the regional hydrological cycle. A detailed knowledge of the timing, duration, frequency and severity of historical hydrological extremes (droughts and floods) is of crucial importance to study their impacts on societies and environment. However, the amount of evidence is provided by temperature and precipitation records inthe Euro-Mediterranean region is clearly unbalanced. Large spatial and temporal gaps still exist, particularly in the Eastern Mediterranean region, where water availability is of vital importance tosociety and ecosystems. The workshop will focus on statistical reconstruction methods, dating and reconstruction uncertainties, disentangling climatic and non-climatic influences, and understanding seasonality effects in hydroclimatic proxy records. Data will be collected and put on the PAGES data repository. Furthermore, workshop participants will address the critical comparison between proxy reconstructed palaeoprecipitation records and climate model simulations. Reconstructions are required to evaluate model skill, identify model deficiencies and narrow the estimates of climate sensitivity. Models in turn are important to evaluate the consistency of different reconstructions, and provide amore consistent picture of climate transitions through the analysis of forcing and feedback mechanisms responsible for past climate changes. This synergy should lead in the end to better proxy-data assimilation schemes, a question that will also be addressed in this workshop.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0237403