Table Of ContentEuropean Trend Atlas of Extreme Temperature
and Precipitation Records
Deliang Chen • Alexander Walther
Anders Moberg • Phil Jones • Jucundus Jacobeit
David Lister
European Trend Atlas of
Extreme Temperature and
Precipitation Records
Deliang Chen Phil Jones
Department of Earth Sciences University of East Anglia
University of Gothenburg Norwich
Gothenburg United Kingdom
Sweden
Jucundus Jacobeit
Alexander Walther Department of Geography
Department of Earth Sciences University of Augsburg
University of Gothenburg Augsburg
Gothenburg Germany
Sweden
David Lister
Anders Moberg University of East Anglia
Department of Physical Geography and Norwich
Quaternary Geology United Kingdom
Stockholm University
Stockholm
Sweden
ISBN 978-94-017-9311-7 ISBN 978-94-017-9312-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-9312-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014953837
Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London
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Preface
Climate change not only includes changes in mean conditions, but also covers changes in
extremes. For impact on society, extreme climatic conditions are often much more important
than mean climate. Thus adaptation to climate change needs to take historical changes in the
extreme climatic conditions into account. Europe is one of a few places in the world where the
longest instrumental meteorological records exist, which provides an important opportunity to
reveal long term changes in the extremes. Over the past decade, several research projects at the
European level have dealt with changes in extreme climatic conditions in Europe.
One of these projects is EMULATE (European and North Atlantic daily to MULtidecadal
climATE variability) that was supported by the European Commission under the Fifth Frame-
work Programme. The project contributed to the implementation of the Key Action “Global
change, climate and biodiversity” within the Environment, Energy and Sustainable Develop-
ment. It was coordinated by Prof. Phil Jones, Climatic Research Unit at the University of East
Anglia, UK and had eight participating institutions across Europe. One of the outcomes of the
EMULATE project was a systematic mapping of the observed trends of 64 temperature and
precipitation indices based on daily instrumental records in Europe. The majority of the indi-
ces describe extreme climatic conditions.
In 2006, this systematic mapping was published as an internal report at the University of
Gothenburg, which was one of the participating organizations of EMULATE. However, given
the nature of the report, the accessibility is limited. Over recent years, needs for information
about past changes in extreme climatic conditions have significantly increased. This is par-
ticularly true for really extreme conditions and for extended time perspectives. This in 2012,
the authors of the report decided to publish an atlas of those indices that represent the most
extreme conditions of climate in Europe. This idea resulted in an atlas attempting to show a
subset of all the EMULATE indices to a much wider audience than the internal report does.
This atlas presents information in the form of maps, time series and tables for a selection
of 27 indices. Four of them represent mean climate conditions while the remaining indices
represent climate extremes. All indices were derived from daily temperature and precipitation
data at European meteorological stations with records starting before 1901. Since the updating
of the daily records for the stations after 2000 has not been finished, this atlas was prepared
by using the trends only until 2000 for all the stations. Seasonal trends of the indices during
three periods (1801–2000, 1851–2000, and 1901–2000) were shown and their significance was
tested. The stations for 1901–2000 were also grouped into three regions (Northern, Central,
and Southern Europe) and regional means were calculated. The trend which this atlas provides
is an easy way to show spatial patterns for a given time period, region, season, and index.
There is strong evidence that climate in Europe has changed during the three periods analyzed,
such that the occurrence and intensity of warm temperature extremes have increased. Precipi-
tation extremes have also changed, but with a less clear pattern compared to the temperature
extremes.
v
vi Preface
The atlas should be interesting to and useful for researchers who are from or interested in
Earth and Environmental Sciences and practitioners from many sectors in society who are
concerned with climate changes in the mean and extreme conditions in Europe.
On behalf of the writing team, I would like to express our thanks to the European Commis-
sion for their financial support to EMULATE with the contract EVK2-CT-2002-00161. The
Swedish Research Council and the Swedish Rescue Services Agency are thanked for their
support and grants. Dr. Elodie J. Tronche and Mariëlle Klijn from Springer are acknowledged
for their support and understanding throughout the preparation of the atlas.
Gothenburg Deliang Chen
October 2013
Contents
1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1
2 Data & Methods ........................................................................................................ 5
2.1 Climate Indices Calculated ................................................................................ 8
2.1.1 Trend Analysis ........................................................................................ 9
3 Atlas of the Trend Analysis ....................................................................................... 11
4 Summary of the Estimated Trends .......................................................................... 167
4.1 Temporal Trends of Indices at the Stations ....................................................... 167
4.1.1 1801 –2000 ............................................................................................... 167
4.1.2 1851 –2000 ............................................................................................... 167
4.1.3 1901–2000 ............................................................................................... 168
4.2 Temporal trends of indices for the regions ....................................................... 168
5 Summary and Conclusions....................................................................................... 171
Appendix .......................................................................................................................... 173
References ........................................................................................................................ 177
vii
Introduction 1
The impact of climate change on society is of fundamental own distribution. The majority of indices relate to counts of
importance for future planning and management. Statistics individual daily extremes, but a few are determined by spells
of extreme events is considered as a part of the climate, and of exceptionally warm/cold temperatures or wet/dry periods
their changes often have much higher impact on society than or the first/last occurrence of an event during a season (like
changes in the mean climate. As the mean climate changes, spring/autumn frosts, beginning/end of the summer dry sea-
the characteristics of extremes may also change (e.g. Tren- son etc.). With respect to temperature and rainfall, spells of
berth 1999; Easterling et al. 2000; Beniston and Stephenson extreme weather generally have large societal and economic
2004). For many impact applications and decision support impacts. Examples of short-lived extremes that may cause
systems, extreme events are much more important than the extensive damage are windstorms, hailstorms and extensive
mean climate (e.g. Mearns et al. 1984; WISE 1999). Changes and heavy snowfall.
in extremes may be due to changes in the mean (Wigley Recently, there has been an international effort towards
1985), changes in the variance (Katz and Brown 1992), or developing a suite of standardized indices so that research-
a combination of both factors (e.g. Brown and Katz 1995; ers around the world can calculate the indices in exactly the
Beniston 2004). same manner. This is important for detecting and monitoring
Extreme climate events can be defined as events that occur changes in the extreme climates and allows for comparison
with extraordinary low frequency during a certain period of of observations and model simulations at the global scale.
time (rarity), events with high magnitude (intensity) or dura- These analyses can then be combined into the regional and
tion, and events causing sizeable impacts such as direct dam- global perspectives (Karl and Easterling 1999; Peterson et al.
ages to assets, cultural heritage, ecosystem service and loss 2001; Frich et al. 2002). However, the definition of several
of human lives. According to The Intergovernmental Panel of the suggested indices is somewhat cumbersome and some
on Climate Change (IPCC) (IPCC 2001, p. 790), “An ex- of the indices still exist in various forms. Consequently, dif-
treme weather event is an event that is rare within its statisti- ferent software may produce slightly different results. Sev-
cal reference distribution at a particular place. Definitions of eral EU research projects either use the indices in the Euro-
‘rare’ vary, but an extreme weather event would normally be pean Climate Assessment (Klein-Tank et al. 2002a; Klein-
as rare as or rarer than the 10th or 90th percentile. By defini- Tank and Können 2003) or a program developed within the
tion, the characteristics of what is called extreme weather STARDEX project (STAtistical and Regional dynamical
may vary from place to place. An extreme climate event is an Downscaling of EXtremes for European regions; Haylock
average of a number of weather events over a certain period and Goodess (2004)). In this atlas we use the extremes in-
of time, an average which itself is extreme (e.g. rainfall over dices software developed within EMULATE (European and
a season).” This definition has also been used in the fourth North Atlantic daily to MULtidecadal climATE variability;
IPCC report published in 2007 (IPCC 2007). Moberg et al. (2006)).
Indices have been developed to measure the degree of While some of the climatic extremes are well described
exceedance of specific thresholds (which define the rarity by meteorological variables/indices, others may not be easily
of such an event) for maxima/minima during specific time- defined with data for a single meteorological variable only.
periods (Jones et al. 1999). Examples are the number of very This is true when the combined impact is involved (Pellikka
warm and very cold days for the time of year, the number of and Järvenpää 2003). For example, freezing rain is a special
heavy rainfall days, and number of frost days (Frich et al. combination of low temperature and rain that produces major
2002). Some extremes are defined by natural thresholds, damages through ice loading on wires and structures. Other
while the majority of extremes are determined by the dataʼs examples are snow damage on forests (Solantie 1994) and
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015 1
D. Chen et al., European Trend Atlas of Extreme Temperature and Precipitation Records, DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-9312-4_1
