The meteorological framework and the cultural memory of three severe winter-storms in early eighteenth-century Europe

Pfister, Christian; Garnier, Emmanuel; Alcoforado, María João; Wheeler, Dennis; Luterbacher, Jürg; Nunes, María de Fátima; Taborda, João

doi:10.1007/s10584-009-9784-y

Cited by 44 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 48 publications

(28 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This explanation is compatible with the fact that the magnitude of the simulated and reconstructed interannual variations is much closer in agreement. On the other hand, it needs to be stressed that monthly indices are needed to address the issue of natural disasters, climatic impacts on and the perception of extremes by societies (Pfister and Brázdil 2006;Rohr 2007;Pfister et al 2009). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

European climate of the past 500 years: new challenges for historical climatology

et al. 2010

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Temperature reconstructions from Europe for the past 500 years based on documentary and instrumental data are analysed. First, the basic documentary data sources, including information about climate and weather-related extremes, are described. Then, the standard palaeoclimatological reconstruction method adopted here is discussed with a particular application to temperature reconstructions from documentary-based proxy data. The focus is on two new reconstructions; JanuaryApril mean temperatures for Stockholm , based on a combination of data for the sailing season in the Stockholm harbour and instrumental temperature measurements, and monthly Central European temperature (CEuT) series (1500-2007) based on documentary-derived temperature indices of the Czech Republic, Germany and Switzerland combined with instrumental records from the same countries. The two series, both of which are individually discussed in greater detail R. Brázdil (B) · P. Dobrovolný in subsequent papers in this special edition, are here compared and analysed using running correlations and wavelet analysis. While the Stockholm series shows a pronounced low-frequency component, the CEuT series indicates much weaker lowfrequency variations. Both series are analysed with respect to three different longperiod reconstructions of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and are compared with other European temperature reconstructions based on tree-rings, wine-harvest data and various climate multiproxies. Correlation coefficients between individual proxy-based series show weaker correlations compared to the instrumental data. There are also indications of temporally varying temperature cross-correlations between different areas of Europe. The two temperature reconstructions have also been compared to geographically corresponding temperature output from simulations with global and regional climate models for the past few centuries. The findings are twofold: on the one hand, the analysis reinforces the hypothesis that the indexdata based CEuT reconstruction may not appropriately reflect the centennial scale variations. On the other hand, it is possible that climate models may underestimate regional decadal variability. By way of a conclusion, the results are discussed from a broader point of view and attention is drawn to some new challenges for future investigations in the historical climatology in Europe.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

European climate of the past 500 years: new challenges for historical climatology

et al. 2010

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Severe windstorms that occurred prior to 1950 have been studied using historical information (e.g., DOBROVOLNY, 2000, 2001;DOBROVOLNY and BRÁZDIL, 2003;PFISTER et al, 2010;WHEELER et al, 2010), but these studies mostly do not provide quantitative wind information. A number of publications analyse long instrumental wind data mainly from Europe and the North Atlantic region (e.g., JÖNSSON and HOLMQUIST, 1995;JÖNSSON and FORTUNIAK, 1995;SCHIESSER et al, 1997;BÄRRING and VON STORCH, 2004;BÄRRING and FORTUNIAK, 2009;MATULLA et al, 2008, in press;KRUEGER and VON STORCH, 2011;WANG et al, 2009, 2011 andreferences therein).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extreme winds at northern mid-latitudes since 1871

Brönnimann¹,

Martius²,

Waldow³

et al. 2012

metz

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Studying a sufficiently large sample of extremes or analysing the statistics of their occurrence, including trends, is hampered by the length of the existing observation-based record. New data sets such as the Twentieth Century Reanalysis (20CR), which consists of an ensemble of 56 members, significantly extend our record back in time. In this paper, we present examples of extremes of winds at northern hemisphere mid-latitudes in 20CR to illustrate challenges and opportunities for analysing extremes over a longer period than previously possible. For four representative storms from Europe and North America, 20CR provides a relatively good depiction of the synoptic-scale meteorological development, although it misses smaller scale features as well as local effects due to orography. For analysing trends of extreme winds, it is shown that the individual ensemble members should be used, rather than the ensemble mean, which appears to be biased towards lower wind speeds early in the record. For the studied locations, decadal variability and trends can best be characterised after around 1950, when the ensemble variance remains consistent. Different methodological approaches for studying changes in extreme winds are discussed. Finally, we show hemispheric maps of trends in extreme wind speeds since 1950.

show abstract

“…It should be noted that the storm surges, such as 1715, happening during day time, did not come as such a surprise as the 1682 one. Compared to other 18th century storm events and storm surges, the 1715 flood event must be considered as being the major flooding event of its century in the SW Netherlands (Baart et al, 2011;Demarée and Muir-Wood, 2009;Pfister et al, 2010).…”

Section: Storm Surgesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flooding in river mouths: human caused or natural events? Five centuries of flooding events in the SW Netherlands, 1500–2000

Kraker

2015

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. This paper looks into flood events of the past 500 years in the SW Netherlands, addressing the issue of what kind of flooding events have occurred and which ones have mainly natural causes and which ones are predominantly human induced. The flood events are classified into two major categories: (a) flood events that were caused during storm surges and (b) flood events which happened during warfare. From both categories a selection of flood events has been made. Each flood event is discussed in terms of time, location, extent of the flooded area and specific conditions. Among these conditions, specific weather circumstances and how long they lasted, the highest water levels reached and dike maintenance are discussed as far as flood events caused during storm surges are concerned. Flood events during warfare as both offensive and defensive strategies are relevant; the paper demonstrates that although the strategic flood events obviously were man-made, the natural feature, being the use of fresh water or sea water, of these events also played a major role. Flood events caused during storm surge may have an obvious natural cause, but the extent of the flooding and damage it caused was largely determined by man.

show abstract

The meteorological framework and the cultural memory of three severe winter-storms in early eighteenth-century Europe

Cited by 44 publications

References 48 publications

European climate of the past 500 years: new challenges for historical climatology

European climate of the past 500 years: new challenges for historical climatology

Extreme winds at northern mid-latitudes since 1871

Flooding in river mouths: human caused or natural events? Five centuries of flooding events in the SW Netherlands, 1500–2000

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About