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The importance of ship log data: reconstructing North Atlantic, European and Mediterranean sea level pressure fields back to 1750 |
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The importance of ship log data: reconstructing North Atlantic,
European and Mediterranean sea level pressure fields back to 1750
Climate Dynamics Published online 28 April 2009. doi:10.1007/s00382-009-0577-9 M. Küttel1, E. Xoplaki1,2, D. Gallego3, J. Luterbacher1,4, R. García-Herrera5, R. Allan6, M. Barriendos7, P.D. Jones8, D. Wheeler9, H. Wanner1 |
1 Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR),
and Institute of Geography, Climatology and Meteorology,
University of Bern, Hallerstrasse 12, 3012 Bern, Switzerland.
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ABSTRACT: Local to regional climate anomalies are to a large extent determined by the state of the atmospheric circulation. The knowledge of large-scale sea level pressure (SLP) variations in former times is therefore crucial when addressing past climate changes across Europe and the Mediterranean. However, currently available SLP reconstructions lack data from the ocean, particularly in the pre-1850 period. Here we present a new statistically-derived 5° x 5° resolved gridded seasonal SLP dataset covering the eastern North Atlantic, Europe and the Mediterranean area (40°W - 50°E; 20°N - 70°N) back to 1750 using terrestrial instrumental pressure series and marine wind information from ship logbooks. For the period 1750-1850, the new SLP reconstruction provides a more accurate representation of the strength of the winter westerlies as well as the location and variability of the Azores High than currently available multiproxy pressure field reconstructions. These findings strongly support the potential of ship logbooks as an important source to determine past circulation variations especially for the pre-1850 period. This new dataset can be further used for dynamical studies relating large-scale atmospheric circulation to temperature and precipitation variability over the Mediterranean and Eurasia, for the comparison with outputs from GCMs as well as for detection and attribution studies. |
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Download data from the WDC Paleo archive: Reconstructed Sea Level Pressure: Data Description Gridded SLP Reconstruction Data File 1750-2002 Data Visualization Page |
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To read or view the full study, please visit the SpringerLink website. It was published in Climate Dynamics, Published online 28 April 2009. doi:10.1007/s00382-009-0577-9 |
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http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/kuettel2009/kuettel2009.html Downloaded Thursday, 01-Aug-2013 11:53:59 EDT Last Updated Thursday, 17-Sep-2009 16:34:04 EDT by paleo@noaa.gov Please see the Paleoclimatology Contact Page or the NCDC Contact Page if you have questions or comments. |