Articles | Volume 18, issue 5
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-1071-2022
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-1071-2022
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| 
17 May 2022
Research article |
| 17 May 2022
| 17 May 2022
Quantifying and reducing researcher subjectivity in the generation of climate indices from documentary sources
George C. D. Adamson
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Department of Geography, King's College London, London, United Kingdom
David J. Nash
School of Applied Sciences, University of Brighton, Brighton, United Kingdom
School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
Stefan W. Grab
School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
Related authors
David J. Nash, George C. D. Adamson, Linden Ashcroft, Martin Bauch, Chantal Camenisch, Dagomar Degroot, Joelle Gergis, Adrian Jusopović, Thomas Labbé, Kuan-Hui Elaine Lin, Sharon D. Nicholson, Qing Pei, María del Rosario Prieto, Ursula Rack, Facundo Rojas, and Sam White
Clim. Past, 17, 1273–1314, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-1273-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-1273-2021, 2021
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Qualitative evidence contained within historical sources provides an important record of climate variability for periods prior to the onset of systematic meteorological data collection. Before such evidence can be used for climate reconstructions, it needs to be converted to a quantitative format. A common approach is the generation of ordinal-scale climate indices. This review, written by members of the PAGES CRIAS working group, provides a global synthesis of the use of the index approach.
Nothabo Elizabeth Ndebele, Stefan Grab, and Herbert Hove
Clim. Past, 18, 2463–2482, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-2463-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-2463-2022, 2022
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An investigation of the wet season characteristics including wet day frequencies, wet–dry spells, and season onset, end and length is done for Cape Town, South Africa. The temporal changes since 1841 in these characteristics indicate an increased incidence of shorter wet seasons and long dry spells in the most recent 3 decades compared to previous years. There is evidence of some associations between solar cycles and the Southern Oscillation index cycles with the wet season characteristics.
Jens Zinke, Takaaki K. Watanabe, Siren Rühs, Miriam Pfeiffer, Stefan Grab, Dieter Garbe-Schönberg, and Arne Biastoch
Clim. Past, 18, 1453–1474, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-1453-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-1453-2022, 2022
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Salinity is an important and integrative measure of changes to the water cycle steered by changes to the balance between rainfall and evaporation and by vertical and horizontal movements of water parcels by ocean currents. However, salinity measurements in our oceans are extremely sparse. To fill this gap, we have developed a 334-year coral record of seawater oxygen isotopes that reflects salinity changes in the globally important Agulhas Current system and reveals its main oceanic drivers.
David J. Nash, George C. D. Adamson, Linden Ashcroft, Martin Bauch, Chantal Camenisch, Dagomar Degroot, Joelle Gergis, Adrian Jusopović, Thomas Labbé, Kuan-Hui Elaine Lin, Sharon D. Nicholson, Qing Pei, María del Rosario Prieto, Ursula Rack, Facundo Rojas, and Sam White
Clim. Past, 17, 1273–1314, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-1273-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-1273-2021, 2021
Short summary
Short summary
Qualitative evidence contained within historical sources provides an important record of climate variability for periods prior to the onset of systematic meteorological data collection. Before such evidence can be used for climate reconstructions, it needs to be converted to a quantitative format. A common approach is the generation of ordinal-scale climate indices. This review, written by members of the PAGES CRIAS working group, provides a global synthesis of the use of the index approach.
Stefan Grab and Tizian Zumthurm
Clim. Past, 16, 679–697, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-679-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-679-2020, 2020
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Here we describe the unique nature of droughts over semi-arid central Namibia (southern Africa) between 1850 and 1920. We establish temporal shifts in the influence and impact that historical droughts had on society and the environment during this period. The paper demonstrates and argues that human experience and the associated reporting of drought events depend strongly on social, environmental, spatial, and societal developmental situations and perspectives.
Rudolf Brázdil, Andrea Kiss, Jürg Luterbacher, David J. Nash, and Ladislava Řezníčková
Clim. Past, 14, 1915–1960, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-14-1915-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-14-1915-2018, 2018
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The paper presents a worldwide state of the art of droughts fluctuations based on documentary data. It gives an overview of achievements related to different kinds of documentary evidence with their examples and an overview of papers presenting long-term drought chronologies over the individual continents, analysis of the most outstanding drought events, the influence of external forcing and large-scale climate drivers, and human impacts and responses. It recommends future research directions.
Related subject area
Subject: Proxy Use-Development-Validation | Archive: Historical Records | Timescale: Centennial-Decadal
Climate and disease in historical urban space: evidence from 19th century Poznań, Poland
Effects of weather and climate on fluctuations of grain prices in southwestern Bohemia, 1725–1824 CE
Climatic signatures in early modern European grain harvest yields
Pre-industrial temperature variability on the Swiss Plateau derived from the instrumental daily series of Bern and Zurich
Is it possible to estimate aerosol optical depth from historic colour paintings?
Meteorological and climatological triggers of notable past and present bark beetle outbreaks in the Czech Republic
Documentary-based climate reconstructions in the Czech Lands 1501–2020 CE and their European context
Controlling water infrastructure and codifying water knowledge: institutional responses to severe drought in Barcelona (1620–1650)
Reassessing long-term drought risk and societal impacts in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, north-east China (1200–2015)
Climate records in ancient Chinese diaries and their application in historical climate reconstruction – a case study of Yunshan Diary
Reconstructions of droughts in Germany since 1500 – combining hermeneutic information and instrumental records in historical and modern perspectives
A survey of the impact of summer droughts in southern and eastern England, 1200–1700
A 424-year tree-ring-based Palmer Drought Severity Index reconstruction of Cedrus deodara D. Don from the Hindu Kush range of Pakistan: linkages to ocean oscillations
Droughts in the area of Poland in recent centuries in the light of multi-proxy data
Rogation ceremonies: a key to understanding past drought variability in northeastern Spain since 1650
The longest homogeneous series of grape harvest dates, Beaune 1354–2018, and its significance for the understanding of past and present climate
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Extreme droughts and human responses to them: the Czech Lands in the pre-instrumental period
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A 414-year tree-ring-based April–July minimum temperature reconstruction and its implications for the extreme climate events, northeast China
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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Multi-periodic climate dynamics: spectral analysis of long-term instrumental and proxy temperature records
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Winter temperature variations over the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River since 1736 AD
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Continental atmospheric circulation over Europe during the Little Ice Age inferred from grape harvest dates
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Grażyna Liczbińska, Jörg Peter Vögele, and Marek Brabec
Clim. Past, 20, 137–150, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-20-137-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-20-137-2024, 2024
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This study examines the relationship between temperature and precipitation as explanatory variables for the probability of death due to waterborne and airborne diseases in historical urban space. The lagged effects of temperature and precipitation on waterborne and airborne diseases were significant, except for the smooth lagged average monthly temperature effect for the latter. There was also significant spatial heterogeneity in the prevalence of deaths due to waterborne and airborne diseases.
Rudolf Brázdil, Jan Lhoták, Kateřina Chromá, and Petr Dobrovolný
Clim. Past Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-2024-2, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-2024-2, 2024
Revised manuscript accepted for CP
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The newly developed series of wheat, rye, barley and oats prices from Sušice (southwestern Bohemia) for the period 1725–1824 CE is used to demonstrate effects of weather, climate, socio-economic and societal factors on their fluctuations with particular attention to years with extremely high prices. Mainly cold spring temperatures and wet conditions from winter to summer were reflected in very high grain prices.
Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, Bo Christiansen, Jan Esper, Heli Huhtamaa, Lotta Leijonhufvud, Christian Pfister, Andrea Seim, Martin Karl Skoglund, and Peter Thejll
Clim. Past, 19, 2463–2491, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-2463-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-19-2463-2023, 2023
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We study the climate signal in long harvest series from across Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries. The climate–harvest yield relationship is found to be relatively weak but regionally consistent and similar in strength and sign to modern climate–harvest yield relationships. The strongest climate–harvest yield patterns are a significant summer soil moisture signal in Sweden, a winter temperature and precipitation signal in Switzerland, and spring temperature signals in Spain.
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We digitized dozens of weather journals containing temperature measurements from in and around Bern and Zurich. They cover over a century before the creation of a national weather service in Switzerland. With these data we could create daily temperature series for the two cities that span the last 265 years. We found that the pre-industrial climate on the Swiss Plateau was colder than suggested by previously available instrumental data sets and about 2.5 °C colder than the present-day climate.
Christian von Savigny, Anna Lange, Anne Hemkendreis, Christoph G. Hoffmann, and Alexei Rozanov
Clim. Past, 18, 2345–2356, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-2345-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-2345-2022, 2022
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This study investigates the possibility of inferring information on aerosol optical depth from photographs of historic paintings. The idea – which has been applied in previous studies – is very interesting because it would provide an archive of the atmospheric aerosol loading covering many centuries. We show that twilight colours depend not only on the aerosol optical thickness, but also on several other parameters, making a quantitative estimate of aerosol optical depth very difficult.
Rudolf Brázdil, Petr Zahradník, Péter Szabó, Kateřina Chromá, Petr Dobrovolný, Lukáš Dolák, Miroslav Trnka, Jan Řehoř, and Silvie Suchánková
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Bark beetle outbreaks are important disturbances to Norway spruce forests. Their meteorological and climatological triggers are analysed for the main oubreaks over the territory of the Czech Republic based on newly created series of such outbreaks, covering the 1781–2021 CE period. The paper demonstrates the shift from windstorms as the main meteorological triggers of past outbreaks to effects of high temperatures and droughts together with windstorms in past decades.
Rudolf Brázdil, Petr Dobrovolný, Jiří Mikšovský, Petr Pišoft, Miroslav Trnka, Martin Možný, and Jan Balek
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The paper deals with 520-year series (1501–2020 CE) of temperature, precipitation, and four drought indices reconstructed from documentary evidence and instrumental observations for the Czech Lands. Basic features of their fluctuations, long-term trends, and periodicities as well as attribution to changes in external forcings and climate variability modes are analysed. Representativeness of Czech reconstructions at European scale is evaluated. The paper shows extreme character of past decades.
Santiago Gorostiza, Maria Antònia Martí Escayol, and Mariano Barriendos
Clim. Past, 17, 913–927, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-913-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-913-2021, 2021
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How did cities respond to drought during the 17th century? This article studies the strategies followed by the city government of Barcelona during the severely dry period from 1620 to 1650. Beyond the efforts to expand urban water supply sources and to improve the maintenance of the system, the city government decided to compile knowledge about water infrastructure into a book and to restrict access to it. This management strategy aimed to increase the city's control over water.
LingYun Tang, Neil Macdonald, Heather Sangster, Richard Chiverrell, and Rachel Gaulton
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A historical drought series (since 1200 CE) for Shenyang, NE China, shows 20th century droughts comparable in magnitude to recent severe droughts. Drought resilience driven by early 20th century societal/cultural changes reduced loss of life compared with the 1887 and 1891 droughts. A longer temporal analysis from integrated precipitation and historical records shows an earlier onset to droughts. Regional standardised precipitation indices could provide early warnings for drought development.
Siying Chen, Yun Su, Xiuqi Fang, and Jia He
Clim. Past, 16, 1873–1887, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-1873-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-1873-2020, 2020
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Private diaries are important sources of historical data for research on climate change. Through a case study of Yunshan Diary, authored by Bi Guo of the Yuan dynasty of China, this article demonstrates how to delve into climate information in ancient diaries, mainly including species distribution records, phenological records and daily weather descriptions. This article considers how to use these records to reconstruct climate change and extreme climatic events on various timescales.
Rüdiger Glaser and Michael Kahle
Clim. Past, 16, 1207–1222, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-1207-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-1207-2020, 2020
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A new study on droughts in Germany since 1500 reveals the long-term trend of single extreme events, as well as drier periods. Extreme droughts appeared in 1540, 1590, 1615, 1706, 1834, 1893, 1921, 1949 and 2018. Like today, droughts had manifold impacts such as harvest failures, water deficits, low water levels and forest fires. This had different societal consequences ranging from famine, disease, rising prices, migration and riots leading to subsidies and discussions on climate change.
Kathleen Pribyl
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Droughts pose a climatic hazard that can have a profound impacts on past societies. Using documentary sources, this paper studies the occurrence and impacts of spring–summer droughts in pre-industrial England from 1200 to 1700. The impacts most relevant to human livelihood, including the agricultural and pastoral sectors of agrarian production, and public health are evaluated.
Sarir Ahmad, Liangjun Zhu, Sumaira Yasmeen, Yuandong Zhang, Zongshan Li, Sami Ullah, Shijie Han, and Xiaochun Wang
Clim. Past, 16, 783–798, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-783-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-783-2020, 2020
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This study provides the opportunity to extend climatic records to preindustrial periods in northern Pakistan. The reconstructed March–August PDSIs for the past 424 years, going back to 1593 CE, enable scientists to know how these areas were prone to climatic extremes in the past. The instrumental data are limited in Pakistan; however, the Cedrus deodara tree that preserves physical characteristics of past climatic variabilities can provide insight into the trend of climatic changes.
Rajmund Przybylak, Piotr Oliński, Marcin Koprowski, Janusz Filipiak, Aleksandra Pospieszyńska, Waldemar Chorążyczewski, Radosław Puchałka, and Henryk Paweł Dąbrowski
Clim. Past, 16, 627–661, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-627-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-627-2020, 2020
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The paper presents the main features of droughts in Poland in the period 996–2015 based on proxy data (documentary and dendrochronological) and instrumental measurements of precipitation. More than 100 droughts were found in documentary sources from the mid-15th century to the end of the 18th century with a maximum in the second halves of the 17th and, particularly, the 18th century. The long-term frequency of droughts in Poland has been stable for the last two or three centuries.
Ernesto Tejedor, Martín de Luis, Mariano Barriendos, José María Cuadrat, Jürg Luterbacher, and Miguel Ángel Saz
Clim. Past, 15, 1647–1664, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-1647-2019, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-1647-2019, 2019
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We developed a new dataset of historical documents by compiling records (rogation ceremonies) from 13 cities in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula (IP). These records were transformed into quantitative continuous data to develop drought indices (DIs). We regionalized them by creating three DIs (Ebro Valle, Mediterranean, and Mountain), which cover the period from 1650 to 1899 CE. We identified extreme drought years and periods which help to understand climate variability in the IP.
Thomas Labbé, Christian Pfister, Stefan Brönnimann, Daniel Rousseau, Jörg Franke, and Benjamin Bois
Clim. Past, 15, 1485–1501, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-1485-2019, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-1485-2019, 2019
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In this paper we present the longest grape harvest date (GHD) record reconstructed to date, i.e. Beaune (France, Burgundy) 1354–2018. Drawing on unedited archive material, the series is validated using the long Paris temperature series that goes back to 1658 and was used to assess April-to-July temperatures from 1354 to 2018. The distribution of extremely early GHD is uneven over the 664-year-long period of the series and mirrors the rapid global warming from 1988 to 2018.
Salvador Gil-Guirado, Juan José Gómez-Navarro, and Juan Pedro Montávez
Clim. Past, 15, 1303–1325, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-1303-2019, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-1303-2019, 2019
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The historical climatology has remarkable research potentialities. However, historical climatology has some methodological limitations. This study presents a new methodology (COST) that allows us to perform climate reconstructions with monthly resolution. The variability of the climatic series obtained are coherent with previous studies. The new proposed method is objective and is not affected by social changes, which allows us to perform studies in regions with different languages and cultures.
Rudolf Brázdil, Petr Dobrovolný, Miroslav Trnka, Ladislava Řezníčková, Lukáš Dolák, and Oldřich Kotyza
Clim. Past, 15, 1–24, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-1-2019, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-1-2019, 2019
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The paper analyses extreme droughts of the pre-instrumental period (1501–1803) over the territory of the recent Czech Republic. In total, 16 droughts were selected for spring, summer and autumn each and 14 droughts for summer half-year (Apr–Sep). They are characterized by very low values of drought indices, high temperatures, low precipitation and by the influence of high-pressure situations. Selected extreme droughts are described in more detail. Effect of droughts on grain prices are studied.
Rudolf Brázdil, Andrea Kiss, Jürg Luterbacher, David J. Nash, and Ladislava Řezníčková
Clim. Past, 14, 1915–1960, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-14-1915-2018, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-14-1915-2018, 2018
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The paper presents a worldwide state of the art of droughts fluctuations based on documentary data. It gives an overview of achievements related to different kinds of documentary evidence with their examples and an overview of papers presenting long-term drought chronologies over the individual continents, analysis of the most outstanding drought events, the influence of external forcing and large-scale climate drivers, and human impacts and responses. It recommends future research directions.
Shanna Lyu, Zongshan Li, Yuandong Zhang, and Xiaochun Wang
Clim. Past, 12, 1879–1888, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-12-1879-2016, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-12-1879-2016, 2016
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This study presents a 414-year growing season minimum temperature reconstruction based on Korean pine tree-ring series at Laobai Mountain, northeast China. It developed a more than 400-year climate record in this area for the first time. This reconstruction showed six cold periods, seven warm periods, and natural disaster records of extreme climate events.
Pierre Brigode, François Brissette, Antoine Nicault, Luc Perreault, Anna Kuentz, Thibault Mathevet, and Joël Gailhard
Clim. Past, 12, 1785–1804, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-12-1785-2016, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-12-1785-2016, 2016
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In this paper, we apply a new hydro-climatic reconstruction method on the Caniapiscau Reservoir (Canada), 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. This new reconstruction is based on a historical reanalysis of global geopotential height fields and aims to produce daily streamflow time series (using a rainfall–runoff model).
J. Zheng, Z. Hua, Y. Liu, and Z. Hao
Clim. Past, 11, 1553–1561, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-11-1553-2015, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-11-1553-2015, 2015
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In this paper we reconstruct the annual temperature anomalies in South Central China from 1850 to 2008, using phenodates of plants, snowfall days, and five tree-ring width chronologies. It is found that rapid warming has occurred since the 1990s, with an abrupt change around 1997, leading to unprecedented variability in warming; a cold interval dominated the 1860s, 1890s, and 1950s; warm decades occurred around 1850, 1870, and 1960; and the warmest decades were the 1990s–2000s.
R. Brázdil, P. Dobrovolný, M. Trnka, O. Kotyza, L. Řezníčková, H. Valášek, P. Zahradníček, and P. Štěpánek
Clim. Past, 9, 1985–2002, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-9-1985-2013, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-9-1985-2013, 2013
Q. Ge, Z. Hao, J. Zheng, and X. Shao
Clim. Past, 9, 1153–1160, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-9-1153-2013, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-9-1153-2013, 2013
H.-J. Lüdecke, A. Hempelmann, and C. O. Weiss
Clim. Past, 9, 447–452, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-9-447-2013, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-9-447-2013, 2013
V. Daux, I. Garcia de Cortazar-Atauri, P. Yiou, I. Chuine, E. Garnier, E. Le Roy Ladurie, O. Mestre, and J. Tardaguila
Clim. Past, 8, 1403–1418, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-8-1403-2012, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-8-1403-2012, 2012
Z.-X. Hao, J.-Y. Zheng, Q.-S. Ge, and W.-C. Wang
Clim. Past, 8, 1023–1030, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-8-1023-2012, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-8-1023-2012, 2012
F. Domínguez-Castro, P. Ribera, R. García-Herrera, J. M. Vaquero, M. Barriendos, J. M. Cuadrat, and J. M. Moreno
Clim. Past, 8, 705–722, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-8-705-2012, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-8-705-2012, 2012
P. Yiou, I. García de Cortázar-Atauri, I. Chuine, V. Daux, E. Garnier, N. Viovy, C. van Leeuwen, A. K. Parker, and J.-M. Boursiquot
Clim. Past, 8, 577–588, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-8-577-2012, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-8-577-2012, 2012
R. Brázdil, K. Chromá, H. Valášek, and L. Dolák
Clim. Past, 8, 467–481, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-8-467-2012, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-8-467-2012, 2012
F. Domínguez-Castro, R. García-Herrera, P. Ribera, and M. Barriendos
Clim. Past, 6, 553–563, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-6-553-2010, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-6-553-2010, 2010
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Short summary
Descriptions of climate held in archives are a valuable source of past climate variability, but there is a large potential for error in assigning quantitative indices (e.g. −2, v. dry to +2, v. wet) to descriptive data. This is the first study to examine this uncertainty. We gave the same dataset to 71 postgraduate students and 6 professional scientists, findings that error can be minimized by taking an average of indices developed by eight postgraduates and only two professional climatologists.
Descriptions of climate held in archives are a valuable source of past climate variability, but...
