The Importance of Long Climate Records
A special issue of Climate (ISSN 2225-1154).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2024) | Viewed by 28635
Special Issue Editor
Interests: climate change; indoor and outdoor microclimate; cultural heritage
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
It is right to celebrate past weather records as they are vital in helping us to identify aspects of climate change. Long records help us to test hypotheses concerning climate change where the pattern of change is slow and subtle. They allow us to test new hypotheses, when it is unknown when the weather readings began. Additionally, they provide warnings of unwelcome changes in Earth’s environment, either of local or global significance. However, in the early instrumental period, records were scarce and taken using non-standard instruments and protocols. Methods, observing times and exposures were different, and in most cases metadata are missing. Some international meteorological networks helped researchers to adopt uniform practices and instruments. A turning point was reached in 1873, when the International Meteorological Committee was established, to coordinate observing methods and protocols. In 1950, this Committee was substituted by the World Meteorological Organization. The problem is to find data and metadata, and then to recover, interpret and transform the early units, as well as correct and homogenize the early series.
The Special Issue will provide examples of climate change identification across a wide spectrum of weather observations, from temperature, precipitation and sunshine, to atmospheric pressure, wind, snow and ice, visibility and fog. The Special Issue will also encourage the discussion of metadata, to show that each weather station needs to have strong accompanying records if the record is to prove useful in the years and decades to come. Where significant changes have occurred, and typically for all data taken before the standardization started in 1873 when the International Meteorological Committee was founded, homogenization techniques must be employed. Examples of data rescue will hopefully be included.
Climate change;
Metadata;
Early instruments and screens;
Early observation protocols;
Transformation from early units and time references (e.g., day starting from twilight, or from the apparent solar time (AST) to the coordinated universal time (UTC));
Homogenization.
Related Reference:
Oxford weather and climate since 1767. Stephen Burt and Tim Burt, 2019. Oxford University Press. 513 pp. Available online: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198834632.001.0001
Durham weather and climate since 1841. Stephen Burt and Tim Burt, 2022. Oxford University Press. 580 pp. Available online: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198870517.001.0001
Improved Understanding of Past Climatic Variability from Early Daily European Instrumental Sources. Dario Camuffo and Phil Jones. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 392 pp. Available online: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1014902904197
Camuffo, D. Microclimate for Cultural Heritage – Measurement, Risk Assessment, Conservation, Restoration and Maintenance of Indoor and Outdoor Monuments, 2019. Third Edition. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 582. Available online: https://doi.org/10.1016/C2017-0-02191-2
Camuffo, D. Historical documents as proxy data in Venice and its marine environment. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science, 2022. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp.1-47. Available online: https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.875
Prof. Dr. Dario Camuffo
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- long weather records
- climate change
- metadata
- homogenization
- case studies from stations with century-scale records
- recovery of early instrumental observations (e.g., 17th, 18th and first half of the 19th century)
- early instruments, protocols, calibrations and units
- instrumental data rescue
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