Toward integrated historical climate research: the example of Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth

Abstract

Climate change has become a key environmental narrative of the 21st century. However, emphasis on the science of climate change has overshadowed studies focusing on human interpretations of climate history, of adaptation and resilience, and of explorations of the institutions and cultural coping strategies that may have helped people adapt to climate changes in the past. Moreover, although the idea of climate change has been subject to considerable scrutiny by the physical sciences, recent climate scholarship has highlighted the need for a re examination of the cultural and spatial dimensions of climate, with contributions from the humanities and social sciences. Establishing a multidisciplinary dialogue and approach to climate research past, present, and future has arguably never been more important. This article outlines developments in historical climatology research and considers examples of integrated multidisciplinary approaches to climate, climatic variability, and climate change research, conducted across the physical sciences, social sciences, humanities, and the arts. We highlight the international Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) initiative as one example of such an integrated approach. Initially, ACRE began as a response from climate science to the needs of the agricultural sector in Queensland, Australia for a longer, more spatially, and temporally-complete database of the weather. ACRE has now evolved to embrace an international group of researchers working together across disciplines to integrate their efforts into a four-dimensional (4D) dynamical global historical climate-quality reanalysis (reconstruction). WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:164–174. doi:10.1002/wcc.37

Low-resolution Australasian palaeoclimate records of the last 2000 years

“…20CR) via data rescue activities (Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth, OldWeather, etc.) (Allan et al, , 2016Brohan et al, 2012) to extend calibration series would provide large benefits to the palaeoclimate research community. Comprehensive understanding of site-specific climate-proxy relationships strengthens confidence that palaeoclimate records are expressing climate variability through time without modification of signals by human activities in the catchment.…”

Toward an Integrated Set of Surface Meteorological Observations for Climate Science and Applications

“…Experience with the International Surface Temperature Initiative (ISTI, Rennie et al, 2014) and the Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth initiative (ACRE, Allan et al, 2016) points to additional, non-traditional, sources which could greatly improve the density of available observations. For example, through Argentinean members of the ISTI databank working group, access was secured to a number of long-term rural stations from the Argentinean Agricultural Ministry.…”

“…Many different types of data can be valuable in addition to NMS stations (Allan et al, 2016). For example, data have been rescued from a French 18th Century Doctor's network (Yiou et al, 2014), and colonial administrations (White et al, 2016).…”

Untitled

“…2014). These results are likely to reflect the brevity of the instrumental data from high latitudes, and associated deficiencies in model representation of SH climate (Jones et al, 2016). …”

“…Major components of internal variability for the Southern Hemisphere are decadal variations in ENSO, the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO, Garreaud and Battisti, 1999;Power et al, 1999;Salinger et al, 2001;Folland et al, 2002;Wu and Hsieh, 2003;Holbrook et al, 2011;Christensen et al, 2013;Kosaka and Xie, 2013;Holbrook et al, 2014;Watanabe et al, 2014;Henley et al, 2015;, the Southern Annular Mode (SAM (Shiotani, 1990;Thompson et al, 2000;Watterson, 2009;Pohl et al, 2009;Yuan and Yonekura, 2011;Jones et al, 2016), and the Indian Ocean Dipole.…”