North Atlantic, European and Mediterranean Gridded SLP Reconstructions 1750-2002 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- World Data Center for Paleoclimatology, Boulder and NOAA Paleoclimatology Program ----------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTE: PLEASE CITE ORIGINAL REFERENCE WHEN USING THIS DATA!!!!! NAME OF DATA SET: North Atlantic, European and Mediterranean Gridded SLP Reconstructions 1750-2002 LAST UPDATE: 5/2009 (Original receipt by WDC Paleo) CONTRIBUTORS: M. Küttel(1), E. Xoplaki(1,2), D. Gallego(3), J. Luterbacher(1,4), R. García-Herrera(5), R. Allan(6), M. Barriendos(7), P. D. Jones(8), D. Wheeler(9) and H. Wanner(1) (1) Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR), and Institute of Geography, Climatology and Meteorology, University of Bern, Hallerstrasse 12, 3012 Bern, Switzerland (2) The Cyprus Institute, EEWRC, Nicosia, Cyprus (3) Universidad Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla, Departamento de Sistemas Físicos, Químicos y Naturales, 41013 Sevilla, Spain (4) Department of Geography, Climatology, Climate Dynamics and Climate Change, Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Giessen, Germany (5) Departamento de Física de la Tierra II, Facultad de CC Físicas, Universidad Complutense, 28040 Madrid, Spain (6) Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter EX1 3PB, UK (7) Department of Modern History, University of Barcelona, 08001 Barcelona, Spain (8) Climatic Research Unit, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK (9) Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of Sunderland, SR1 3PZ, UK IGBP PAGES/WDCA CONTRIBUTION SERIES NUMBER: 2009-046 WDC PALEO CONTRIBUTION SERIES CITATION: Küttel, M., et al. 2009. North Atlantic, European and Mediterranean Gridded SLP Reconstructions 1750-2002. IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology Data Contribution Series # 2009-046. NOAA/NCDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder CO, USA. ORIGINAL REFERENCES: Küttel, M., E. Xoplaki, D. Gallego, J. Luterbacher, R. García-Herrera, R. Allan, M. Barriendos, P.D. Jones, D. Wheeler and H. Wanner. 2009. The importance of ship log data: reconstructing North Atlantic, European and Mediterranean sea level pressure fields back to 1750. Climate Dynamics, Online First. DOI: 10.1007/s00382-009-0577-9 Allan, R. and T. Ansell. 2006. A new globally complete monthly historical gridded mean sea level pressure dataset (HadSLP2): 1850-2004. Journal of Climate 19:5816–5842 ABSTRACT (Küttel et al. 2009): Local to regional climate anomalies are to a large extent determined by the state of the atmospheric circulation. The knowledge of large- scale sea level pressure (SLP) variations in former times is therefore crucial when addressing past climate changes across Europe and the Mediterranean. However, currently available SLP reconstructions lack data from the ocean, particularly in the pre-1850 period. Here we present a new statistically-derived 5° x 5° resolved gridded seasonal SLP dataset covering the eastern North Atlantic, Europe and the Mediterranean area (40°W–50°E; 20°N–70°N) back to 1750 using terrestrial instrumental pressure series and marine wind information from ship logbooks. For the period 1750–1850, the new SLP reconstruction provides a more accurate representation of the strength of the winter westerlies as well as the location and variability of the Azores High than currently available multiproxy pressure field reconstructions. These findings strongly support the potential of ship logbooks as an important source to determine past circulation variations especially for the pre-1850 period. This new dataset can be further used for dynamical studies relating large-scale atmospheric circulation to temperature and precipitation variability over the Mediterranean and Eurasia, for the comparison with outputs from GCMs as well as for detection and attribution studies. GEOGRAPHIC REGION: North Atlantic, Europe, and Mediterranean Sea PERIOD OF RECORD: 1750 - 2002 AD FUNDING SOURCES: (1) Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) National Center of Competence in Research on Climate (NCCR Climate) project PALVAREX2, Switzerland (MK, JL, EX) (2) European Science Foundation (ESF) activity Mediterranean Climate Variability and Predictability MedCLIVAR (MK, DG) (3) European Union/FP6 project CIRCE (grant 036961) (EX) (4) European Union/FP7 project ACQWA (grant 212250) (JL) (5) European Union/FP6 project MILLENNIUM (IP 017008-2) (MB,DW) (6) U.S. Department of Energy (grant DE-FG02-98ER62601) (PDJ) (7) ACRE (atmospheric circulation reconstructions over the Earth) initiative, Australia, UK, US DESCRIPTION: Gridded seasonal Sea Level Pressure (SLP, hPa) reconstruction covering the eastern North Atlantic, Europe and the Mediterranean area (40°W–50°E; 20°N–70°N) back to 1750, based on ship logs and instrumental pressure series. Longitudes and latitudes of grid points 40°W-50°E; 20°N-70°N (center of grid box) 5°x5° spatial resolution 19 longitudes * 11 Latitudes (209 grid points) no missing values Time period represented by data: 1750-2002 with a seasonal (DJF,MAM,JJA,SON) resolution 1750-1886 is the reconstruction, 1887-2002 HadSLP2 by Allan and Ansell 2006. This is a 5°x5° gridded, seasonal (DJF,MAM,JJA,SON) resolved SLP reconstruction covering the Eastern North Atlantic, Europe and the Mediterranean (40°W-50°E; 20°N-70°N). It has accordingly 19 longitudes and 11 latitudes, making a total of 209 grid points. The reconstruction is based on multivariate principal component regression using instrumental pressure series along with wind direction and wind speed from ship logbooks as predictors and the gridded HadSLP2 dataset by Allan and Ansell 2006 as predictand. Calibration was performed over 1887-2002 with the derived transfer functions applied to the predictors during the period 1750-1886. The data are in ascii and structured as follows: 1st column: year AD 2nd column: season (13=winter, 14=spring, 15=summer, 16=autumn) 3rd-211th column: SLP [hPa] at 209 gridpoints Each row contains the full gridded datasets running from the NW-corner to the SE-corner, latitude-by-latitude. Accordingly: 1st gridpoint centered at: 40W/70N 2nd gridpoint centered at: 35W/70N 3rd gridpoint centered at: 30W/70N . . 100th gridpoint centered at: 20W/45N . . . 208th gridpoint centered at: 45E/20N 209th gridpoint centered at: 50E/20N The SLP data from Winter 1750-Autumn 1886 are the reconstruction, while Winter 1887-Autumn 2002 is the HadSLP2 dataset by Allan and Ansell 2006. DATA: Data are contained in ASCII text matrix file: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/historical/kuettel2009slp.txt