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Chapter 1 Mediterranean climate variability over the last centuries: A review

2006; Elsevier BV; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/s1571-9197(06)80004-2

2352-281X

Jürg Luterbacher, Elena Xoplaki, Carlo Casty, Heinz Wanner, Andreas Pauling, Marcel Küttel, This Rutishauser, Stefan Brönnimann, Erich Fischer, Dominik Fleitmann, J. Fidel González‐Rouco, Ricardo García‐Herrera, Mariano Barriendos, F. S. Rodrigo, José Carlos González Hidalgo, Miguel Ángel Saz, Luís Gimeno, Pedro Ribera, Manola Brunet, Heiko Paeth, Norel Rîmbu, Thomas Felis, Jucundus Jacobeit, Armin Dünkeloh, Eduardo Zorita, Joël Guiot, Murat Türkeş, María João Alcoforado, Ricardo M. Trigo, Dennis Wheeler, Simon F. B. Tett, Michael Mann, Ramzi Touchan, Drew Shindell, Sergio Silenzi, Paolo Montagna, Dario Camuffo, Annarita Mariotti, T. Nanni, Michele Brunetti, Maurizio Maugeri, Christos Zerefos, S. de Zolt, Piero Lionello, María de Fátima Nunes, Volker Rath, Hugo Beltrami, Emmanuel Garnier, Emmanuel Ley Roy Ladurie,

Geology and Paleoclimatology Research

This chapter discusses a necessary task for assessing to which degree the industrial period is unusual against the background of pre-industrial climate variability. It is the reconstruction and interpretation of temporal and spatial patterns of climate in earlier centuries. There are distinct differences in the temporal resolution among the various proxies. Some of the proxy records are annually or even higher resolved and hence record year-by-year patterns of climate in past centuries. Several of the temperature reconstructions reveal that the late twentieth century warmth is unprecedented at hemispheric scales and is explained by anthropogenic, greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing. The chapter discusses the availability and potential of long, homogenized instrumental data, documentary, and natural proxies to reconstruct aspects of past climate at local- to regional-scales within the larger Mediterranean area, which includes climate extremes and the incidence of natural disasters. The chapter describes the role of external forcing, including natural and anthropogenic influences, and natural, internal variability in the coupled ocean–atmosphere system at subcontinental scale.