Temporal resolution of climate pressures on façades in Oxford 1815–2021

Abstract

Changes in climate will exert increasing pressure on heritage, so standard climate metrics need to be tuned to heritage threats. Historical meteorological records are commonly available as monthly summaries, with few offering daily observations as daily readings may not have been taken or yet digitised. As data averaged over longer intervals misses short weather events, we investigate the extent to which temporal resolution is important for assessing climate pressures on façades. The Radcliffe Meteorological Station, Oxford, UK, provides the longest continual record of daily temperature and precipitation measurements in the UK. We use this record to assess the role of temporal scale in heritage climate parameters relating to (i) sunshine and warmth, (ii) rainy days and (iii) freezing events. Where there is a linear relationship between daily and monthly scale data, monthly observations can be interpolated as heritage climate parameters. However, for the majority of parameters, daily data was required to capture the variability in the datasets. We argue for the increased availability of daily observations to help assess the threat of climate to heritage.

Modelling temperature‐precipitation pressures on African timber heritage

“…Only model runs of the variant r1i1p1f* were used. Models included within this study were required to have: (i) daily precipitation and 2 m surface temperature (Brimblecombe & Richards, 2023) and (ii) outputs for the years 1984–2013 (past); 2035–2064 (mid‐century); 2070–2099 (end‐century). Where multiple models were available from the same modelling group, only one model was retained for analysis (typically the model with higher spatial resolution) to reduce the risk of model structural biases introduced by model interdependencies (Knutti et al, 2013; Kuma et al, 2023).…”

Applied climatology for heritage

“…Traditional climate metrics, such as maximum and minimum temperature, total rainfall and average relative humidity, can provide a broad sense of the climate experienced by heritage. However, such metrics rarely represent the specific drivers that are of interest or concern to those managing heritage, which may need to capture the frequency or cumulative total of occurrence, or the number of times when set thresholds have been crossed (Brimblecombe and Richards 2023a). The development of metrics specific to heritage contexts (Fig.…”

“…Persistent rain (P) can affect many sport events by affecting the state of the ground Poor light can affect fixtures such as cricket matches and can be a function of cloud cover resolutions (e.g. daily or hourly) if the threat is to be captured (Bienvenido-Huertas et al 2021;Brimblecombe and Richards 2023a). The use of appropriate time scales is especially important for seasonal processes, as even small shifts of a few days or weeks can have implications for heritage practice and management e.g., in Japan, the Yayoi festival celebrates springtime with floats decorated in cherry blossoms, but the date of the festival is fixed, so artificial flowers have to be used because cherry trees are now blooming earlier (Brimblecombe and Hayashi 2018).…”

Tuning and Effectiveness in Heritage Models

“…Heritage science sometimes uses annual or monthly averages (e.g., [50,51]), but for models to capture processes that drive deterioration, much shorter time scales are often needed, commonly requiring daily [33] or sub-daily data [17,18]. In some cases, it can be possible to extract the higher-resolution data from monthly averages, but this is not always possible [52]. Thus, datasets at higher resolution can be of importance in a heritage context.…”