Daily minimum and maximum temperature in the St-Lawrence Valley, Quebec: two centuries of climatic observations from Canada

Slonosky, Victoria

doi:10.1002/joc.4085

Cited by 12 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…van Wijngaarden, ). The existing National Climate Data Archive of Environment Canada and other digital and written archives (Canadian Historical Climate Data Rescue Project; Slonosky, ) contain a wealth of underutilized climate archives that could be used in conjunction with atmospheric reanalysis and other homogenized stations to create additional long temperature records (e.g. Bromwich et al ., ; Nordli et al ., ; Lister and Jones, ; Way and Bonnaventure, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Underestimated warming of northern Canada in the Berkeley Earth temperature product

Way

Oliva

Viau

2016

Intl Journal of Climatology

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The Berkeley Earth surface temperature (BETP) project provides gridded global temperature anomaly products using an automated geostatistical approach to adjust station data for systematic biases. Despite its widespread usage, the BETP data set has not been evaluated at the national‐scale, especially in data‐sparse high latitude environments. This study provides an evaluation of the BETP product across all of Canada using 333 climate stations made available from the homogenized Environment Canada station network (HTcan). Comparison between co‐located monthly air temperature anomalies for the two data sets suggests small differences between the two products for mean surface (∼2 m) air temperature. However, the relatively minimal bias in mean temperature is a consequence of contrasting cold and warm biases in minimum and maximum air temperatures, respectively, that are larger but effectively even out when averaged together. The BETP product is shown to exhibit systematic underestimation of recent regional warming in northern Canada which when combined with an overestimation of warmth earlier in the record results in an observable reduction in warming rates for minimum and mean temperature anomalies since 1950. The temporal evolution and spatial pattern of the observed biases suggest that the BETP‐automated adjustments to station data in northern Canada miss some inhomogeneities in the raw station data. These results highlight the need for enhanced data recovery and homogenization efforts in data‐sparse high latitude regions and emphasize the importance of national‐scale climate data sets for evaluating global gridded products. We also recommend caution when using the BETP minimum and maximum monthly air temperature products for long‐term trend analyses.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Underestimated warming of northern Canada in the Berkeley Earth temperature product

Way

Oliva

Viau

2016

Intl Journal of Climatology

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“…The meteorological records come from historical and modern observations from several observers and three locations in Southern Quebec: Montreal, Quebec City and Fort Coulonge (figure 1). These observations were compiled by Slonosky (2014Slonosky ( , 2015, www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ paleo-search/study/16336 into two unique time series for the St. Lawrence Valley of daily minimum and maximum temperature values. Here we used the mean of the two time series over the 1803-2010 period (St. Lawrence Tmean hereafter).…”

Section: Hydroclimate Observationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Underestimation of the Tambora effects in North American taiga ecosystems

Gennaretti

Boucher

Nicault

et al. 2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

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The Tambora eruption (1815 AD) was one of the major eruptions of the last two millennia and has no equivalents over the last two centuries. Here, we collected an extensive network of early meteorological time series, climate simulation data and numerous, well-replicated proxy records from Eastern Canada to analyze the strength and the persistence of the Tambora impact on the regional climate and forest processes. Our results show that the Tambora impacts on the terrestrial biosphere were stronger than previously thought, and not only affected tree growth and carbon uptake for a longer period than registered in the regional climate, but also determined forest demography and structure. Increased tree mortality, four times higher than the background level, indicates that the Tambora climatic impact propagated to influence the structure of the North American taiga for several decades. We also show that the Tambora signal is more persistent in observed data (temperature, river ice dynamics, forest growth, tree mortality) than in simulated ones (climate and forest-growth simulations), indicating that our understanding of the mechanisms amplifying volcanic perturbations on climates and ecosystems is still limited, notably in the North American taiga.

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“…() for the period 1873–2010 to form a single‐temperature series from 1742 to 2010 (continuous from 1798 to 2010) for the St. Lawrence Valley region. This series is analysed for changes over time in both mean and extreme values in Slonosky ().…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This article describes in detail the instrumental observations and the procedures used to assess their quality. In a companion article, the temperature observations from the individual series described here are used to estimate minimum and maximum temperatures (Slonosky, 2014). These historical minimum and maximum temperature observations and estimates are then combined with homogenized data from Vincent et al (2002) for the period 1873-2010 to form a single-temperature series from 1742 to 2010 (continuous from 1798 to 2010) for the St. Lawrence Valley region.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These historical minimum and maximum temperature observations and estimates are then combined with homogenized data from Vincent et al (2002) for the period 1873-2010 to form a single-temperature series from 1742 to 2010 (continuous from 1798 to 2010) for the St. Lawrence Valley region. This series is analysed for changes over time in both mean and extreme values in Slonosky (2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Historical climate observations in Canada: 18th and 19th century daily temperature from the St. Lawrence Valley, Quebec

Slonosky¹

2014

Geoscience Data Journal

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Daily observations of weather and climate for the province of Qu ebec, Canada, start in the 18th century and continue to the present day. Daily temperature observations from 12 observers ranging from 1742 to 1873 are described here. The frequency distributions of the temperature observations from each of the historical weather journals are examined for data quality and consistency. Adjustments for differing types of exposures, particularly north wall exposures, are developed. It is shown that examination of the daily data distribution can be used to infer information concerning the instruments used and likely exposure in the absence of metadata. Comparisons of the relative frequency distributions of historical and modern hourly observations are used to assess the reliability of the daily historical temperature data, and are able to detect problems with instrument exposure or sampling biases. Historical observations of temperature from the 18th and 19th centuries are shown to be comparable to modern temperature data. These daily observations will be used in further studies to analyse changes in climate and extreme conditions on a decadal to centennial time frame, and will form part of international data sets for the reconstruction and analysis of past climate events.

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Daily minimum and maximum temperature in the St-Lawrence Valley, Quebec: two centuries of climatic observations from Canada

Cited by 12 publications

References 39 publications

Underestimated warming of northern Canada in the Berkeley Earth temperature product

Underestimated warming of northern Canada in the Berkeley Earth temperature product

Underestimation of the Tambora effects in North American taiga ecosystems

Historical climate observations in Canada: 18th and 19th century daily temperature from the St. Lawrence Valley, Quebec

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