A monthly global paleo-reanalysis of the atmosphere from 1600 to 2005 for studying past climatic variations

Franke, Jörg; Brönnimann, Stefan; Bhend, Jonas; Brugnara, Yuri

doi:10.1038/sdata.2017.76

Cited by 96 publications

(130 citation statements)

References 83 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

129

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Spatially extrapolated instrumental datasets show that the summer of 1816 was characterised by an anomalous low pressure system centred over Northern Europe (figure 2(a)), with Central European mean values among the most extreme since at least 1780 (figure S1d and Luterbacher et al 2002, Küttel et al 2010, Franke et al 2017. The anomalously cold and wet conditions are accordingly centred over western and central Europe and southern Scandinavia.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Disentangling the causes of the 1816 European year without a summer

Schurer

Hegerl

Luterbacher

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The European summer of 1816 has often been referred to as a 'year without a summer' due to anomalously cold conditions and unusual wetness, which led to widespread famines and agricultural failures. The cause has often been assumed to be the eruption of Mount Tambora in April 1815, however this link has not, until now, been proven. Here we apply state-of-the-art event attribution methods to quantify the contribution by the eruption and random weather variability to this extreme European summer climate anomaly. By selecting analogue summers that have similar sea-levelpressure patterns to that observed in 1816 from both observations and unperturbed climate model simulations, we show that the circulation state can reproduce the precipitation anomaly without external forcing, but can explain only about a quarter of the anomalously cold conditions. We find that in climate models, including the forcing by the Tambora eruption makes the European cold anomaly up to 100 times more likely, while the precipitation anomaly became 1.5-3 times as likely, attributing a large fraction of the observed anomalies to the volcanic forcing. Our study thus demonstrates how linking regional climate anomalies to large-scale circulation is necessary to quantitatively interpret and attribute post-eruption variability.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Disentangling the causes of the 1816 European year without a summer

Schurer

Hegerl

Luterbacher

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…December–February 1783–1784 European surface temperature anomalies (K) for (a) 400‐year Ensemble Kalman Filter reanalysis (Franke et al, ), (b) Laki ensemble average, and (c) noLaki ensemble average. Anomalies are calculated with respect to the 5 years before the eruption.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Difference in standard deviation (%) of temperature for (a) June–August (JJA) and (b) December–February (DJF) for the 400‐year Ensemble Kalman Filter (EKF400) reanalysis (Franke et al, ) between 1751–1800 and 1951–2000 for HadCRUT4 (Morice et al, ). Blue shading indicates that variability in the 1751–1799 period is underestimated compared to the 1951–1999 period.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling the 1783–1784 Laki Eruption in Iceland: 2. Climate Impacts

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Laki eruption in Iceland, which began in June 1783, was followed by many of the typical climate responses to volcanic eruptions: suppressed precipitation and drought, crop failure, and surface cooling. In contrast to the observed cooling in 1784–1786, the summer of 1783 was anomalously warm in Western Europe, with July temperatures reaching more than 3 K above the mean. However, the winter of 1783–1784 in Europe was as cold as 3 K below the mean. While climate models generally reproduce the surface cooling and decreased rainfall associated with volcanic eruptions, model studies have failed to reproduce the extreme warming in western Europe that followed the Laki eruption. As a result of the inability to reproduce the anomalous warming, the question remains as to whether this phenomenon was a response to the eruption or merely an example of internal climate variability. Using the Community Earth System Model from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, we investigate the “Laki haze” and its effect on Northern Hemisphere climate in the 12 months following the eruption onset. We find that the warm summer of 1783 was a result of atmospheric blocking over Northern Europe, which in our model cannot be attributed to the eruption. In addition, the extremely cold winter of 1783–1784 was aided by an increased likelihood of an El Niño after the eruption. Understanding the causes of these anomalies is important not only for historical purposes but also for understanding and predicting possible climate responses to future high‐latitude volcanic eruptions.

show abstract

“…For the analysis of atmospheric circulation during the 19th and 20th century, we use the reconstruction EKF400 (Reconstruction by Ensemble Kalman Fitting over 400 years; Franke et al, 2017a). This global, three-dimensional reconstruction is based on an off-line data assimilation approach of early instrumental, documentary, and proxy data into an ensemble of climate model simulations.…”

Section: Climate Model Simulations and Reconstructionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Causes of increased flood frequency in central Europe in the 19th century

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Historians and historical climatologists have long pointed to an increased flood frequency in central Europe in the mid-and late 19th century. However, the causes have remained unclear. Here, we investigate the changes in flood frequency in Switzerland based on long time series of discharge and lake levels, precipitation, and weather types and based on climate model simulations, focusing on the warm season. Annual series of peak discharge or maximum lake level, in agreement with previous studies, display increased frequency of floods in the mid-19th century and decreased frequency after the Second World War. Annual series of warm-season mean precipitation and high percentiles of 3 d precipitation totals (partly) reflect these changes. A daily weather type classification since 1763 is used to construct flood probability indices for the catchments of the Rhine in Basel and the outflow of Lake Lugano, Ponte Tresa. The indices indicate an increased frequency of flood-prone weather types in the mid-19th century and a decreased frequency in the post-war period, consistent with a climate reconstruction that shows increased (decreased) cyclonic flow over western Europe in the former (latter) period. To assess the driving factors of the detected circulation changes, we analyze weather types and precipitation in a large ensemble of atmospheric model simulations driven with observed sea-surface temperatures. In the simulations, we do not find an increase in flood-prone weather types in the Rhine catchment in the 19th century but a decrease in the post-war period that could have been related to sea-surface temperature anomalies.

show abstract

A monthly global paleo-reanalysis of the atmosphere from 1600 to 2005 for studying past climatic variations

Cited by 96 publications

References 83 publications

Disentangling the causes of the 1816 European year without a summer

Disentangling the causes of the 1816 European year without a summer

Modeling the 1783–1784 Laki Eruption in Iceland: 2. Climate Impacts

Causes of increased flood frequency in central Europe in the 19th century

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About