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

Slonosky, Victoria

doi:10.1002/gdj3.11

Cited by 21 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…The quality of the individual series was evaluated in a companion paper (Slonosky, 2014b) using comparisons based on the frequency distribution of the temperature observations. Extensive use of archival material including weather registers, diaries, personal scientific notebooks, letters, maps, directories and contemporary publications, combined with the use of technologies such as Google Earth, has enabled most of the weather registers used in this study to be located to a particular street address.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Modern parallel observations were used to determine adjustment factors for the north wall bias and applied to those observations which were explicitly states to have a north wall exposure (Gaultier, Spark, andSmallwood 1852-1863), or where the frequency analysis suggested the observations had a north wall bias (Skakel, Cleghorn and Liveright). Greater detail on these points is given in Slonosky (2014b (Figure 2(a)). …”

Section: Historical Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(Slonosky, 2014b). The principal method used to assess the reliability of the historical observations and the continuity between historical and modern observations was to compare the relative frequency distributions of the historical observations and the modern data for the same hour of observations as in the historical records.…”

Section: Historical Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Slonosky

2014

Int. J. Climatol.

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Climatological and meteorological observations in Canada begin in the first half of the 18th century. Continuous daily observations of the weather and climate for the province of Quebec start in the late 18th century. Estimates of daily minimum and maximum temperatures from historical fixed hour observations are provided from regression models based on hourly data from the modern period. Observations of temperature from different locations and observers are compared and regressions models are used to compile a single series of daily minimum and maximum temperatures extending back to 1742, with nearly continuous observations from 1798. Mean, absolute minimum and maximum values suggest considerable variability in the climate over the past two centuries. Based on a variety of climate indicators, exceptionally warm years include 1808, 1848, 1870, 1953 and 1998, while cold years include 1809, 1816, 1818, 1875 and 1904. Analysis of frost days and growing season length suggest a reduction in cold temperatures over past 200 years, while the incidence of cold spells and heat waves has decreased.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Historical Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Slonosky

2014

Int. J. Climatol.

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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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“…These series are rarely continuous at the daily timescale and are derived from different sources; as a result, producing good quality continuous series therefore requires a lot of work. For example, Slonosky (2014) compiled data from numerous sources (mainly from the cities of Québec and Montréal) to produce continuous daily temperature series for the St. Lawrence Valley region for the 1798-2010 period. In northeastern Canada, two sources of such historical data exist.…”

Section: The Quest For Centennial Climatic Series In Northern Canadamentioning

confidence: 99%

Streamflow variability over the 1881–2011 period in northern Québec: comparison of hydrological reconstructions based on tree rings and geopotential height field reanalysis

Brigode

Brissette²,

Nicault

et al. 2016

Clim. Past

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Abstract. Over the last decades, different methods have been used by hydrologists to extend observed hydro-climatic time series, based on other data sources, such as tree rings or sedimentological datasets. For example, tree ring multi-proxies have been studied for the Caniapiscau Reservoir in northern Québec (Canada), leading to the reconstruction of flow time series for the last 150 years. In this paper, we applied a new hydro-climatic reconstruction method on the Caniapiscau Reservoir and compare the obtained streamflow time series against time series derived from dendrohydrology by other authors on the same catchment and study the natural streamflow variability over the 1881–2011 period in that region. This new reconstruction is based not on natural proxies but on a historical reanalysis of global geopotential height fields, and aims firstly to produce daily climatic time series, which are then used as inputs to a rainfall–runoff model in order to obtain daily streamflow time series. The performances of the hydro-climatic reconstruction were quantified over the observed period, and showed good performances, in terms of both monthly regimes and interannual variability. The streamflow reconstructions were then compared to two different reconstructions performed on the same catchment by using tree ring data series, one being focused on mean annual flows and the other on spring floods. In terms of mean annual flows, the interannual variability in the reconstructed flows was similar (except for the 1930–1940 decade), with noteworthy changes seen in wetter and drier years. For spring floods, the reconstructed interannual variabilities were quite similar for the 1955–2011 period, but strongly different between 1880 and 1940. The results emphasize the need to apply different reconstruction methods on the same catchments. Indeed, comparisons such as those above highlight potential differences between available reconstructions and, finally, allow a retrospective analysis of the proposed reconstructions of past hydro-climatological variabilities.

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

Cited by 21 publications

References 15 publications

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

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

Underestimation of the Tambora effects in North American taiga ecosystems

Streamflow variability over the 1881–2011 period in northern Québec: comparison of hydrological reconstructions based on tree rings and geopotential height field reanalysis

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