DOCU-CLIM: A global documentary climate dataset for climate reconstructions

Angela-Maria Burgdorf, Stefan Brönnimann, George Adamson, Tatsuya Amano, Yasuyuki Aono, David Barriopedro, Teresa Bullón, Chantal Camenisch, Dario Camuffo, Valérie Daux, María del Rosario Prieto, Petr Dobrovolný, David Gallego, Ricardo García-Herrera, Joelle Gergis, Stefan Grab, Matthew Hannaford, Jari Holopainen, Clare Kelso, Zoltán KernAndrea Kiss, Kuan-Hui Elaine Lin, Neil Loader, Martin Možný, David Nash, Sharon Nicholson, Christian Pfister, Fernando Rodrigo, This Rutishauser, Sapna Sharma, Katalin Takács, Ernesto Vargas, Inmaculada Vega

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Documentary climate data describe evidence of past climate arising from predominantly written historical documents such as diaries, chronicles, newspapers, or logbooks. Over the past decades, historians and climatologists have generated numerous document-based time series of local and regional climates. However, a global dataset of documentary climate time series has never been compiled, and documentary data are rarely used in large-scale climate reconstructions. Here, we present the first global multi-variable collection of documentary climate records. The dataset DOCU-CLIM comprises 621 time series (both published and hitherto unpublished) providing information on historical variations in temperature, precipitation, and wind regime. The series are evaluated by formulating proxy forward models (i.e., predicting the documentary observations from climate fields) in an overlapping period. Results show strong correlations, particularly for the temperature-sensitive series. Correlations are somewhat lower for precipitation-sensitive series. Overall, we ascribe considerable potential to documentary records as climate data, especially in regions and seasons not well represented by early instrumental data and palaeoclimate proxies.

Original languageEnglish
Article number402
Number of pages14
JournalScientific Data
Volume10
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 23 Jun 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the European Commission (ERC Grant PALAEO-RA, 787574) and by Swiss National Science Foundation project WeaR (188701). Simulations underlying EKF400v2 were performed at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre CSCS. ET is supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action (“ITHACA-101024389”, and the Government of Aragón through the “Program of research groups” (group H09_20R, “Climate, Water, Global Change, and Natural Systems”).

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the European Commission (ERC Grant PALAEO-RA, 787574) and by Swiss National Science Foundation project WeaR (188701). Simulations underlying EKF400v2 were performed at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre CSCS. ET is supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action (“ITHACA-101024389”, and the Government of Aragón through the “Program of research groups” (group H09_20R, “Climate, Water, Global Change, and Natural Systems”).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).

Keywords

  • Climate reconstruction
  • Documentary evidence
  • Dataset
  • Forward modelling

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