Title: A collection of sub-daily pressure and temperature observations for the early instrumental period with a focus on the "year without a summer" 1816

Abstract

The eruption of Mount Tambora (Indonesia) in April 1815 is the largest documented volcanic eruption in history. It is associated with a large global cooling during the following year, felt particularly in parts of Europe and North America, where the year 1816 became known as the "year without a summer". This paper describes an effort made to collect surface meteorological observations from the early instrumental period, with a focus on the years of and immediately following the eruption (1815–1817). Although the collection aimed in particular at pressure observations, correspondent temperature observations were also recovered. Some of the series had already been described in the literature, but a large part of the data, recently digitised from original weather diaries and contemporary magazines and newspapers, is presented here for the first time. The collection puts together more than 50 sub-daily series from land observatories in Europe and North America and from ships in the tropics. The pressure observations have been corrected for temperature and gravity and reduced to mean sea level. Moreover, an additional statistical correction was applied to take into account common error sources in mercury barometers. To assess the reliability of the corrected data set, the variance in the pressuremore » observations is compared with modern climatologies, and single observations are used for synoptic analyses of three case studies in Europe. All raw observations will be made available to the scientific community in the International Surface Pressure Databank.« less

Authors:

Brugnara, Y.  ^[1];

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Auchmann, R. ^[1]; Brönnimann, S. ^[1]; Allan, R. J. ^[2]; Auer, I. ^[3]; Barriendos, M. ^[4]; Bergström, H. ^[5]; Bhend, J. ^[6]; Brázdil, R. ^[7]; Compo, G. P. ^[8]; Cornes, R. C. ^[9]; Dominguez-Castro, F. ^[10]; van Engelen, A. F. V. ^[11]; Filipiak, J. ^[12]; Holopainen, J. ^[13]; Jourdain, S. ^[14]; Kunz, M.  ^[15];

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Luterbacher, J. ^[16]; Maugeri, M. ^[17]; Mercalli, L. ^[18] more »; Moberg, A.  ^[19];

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Mock, C. J. ^[20]; Pichard, G. ^[21]; Řezníčková, L. ^[7]; van der Schrier, G.  ^[11];

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• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0001-7395-8023"

Slonosky, V. ^[22]; Ustrnul, Z. ^[23]; Valente, M. A. ^[24]; Wypych, A.  ^[23];

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Yin, X. ^[25] « less

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+ Show Author Affiliations

1. Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, Bern (Switzerland); Univ. of Bern (Switzerland). Inst. of Geography
2. Hadley Centre, Exeter, Devon (United Kingdom)
3. Central Inst. for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG), Vienna (Austria)
4. Univ. of Barcelona (Spain). Dept. of Modern History
5. Uppsala Univ. (Sweden). Dept. of Earth Sciences
6. Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatoloty (MeteoSwiss), Zurich (Switzerland)
7. Masaryk Univ., Brno (Czech Republic). Inst. of Geography; Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Brno (Czech Republic). Global Change Research Centre
8. Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States). Physical Sciences Division, Cooperative Inst. for Research in Environmental Sciences; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Boulder, CO (United States). Earth System Research Lab.
9. Univ. of East Anglia, Norwich (United Kingdom). School of Environmental Sciences, Climate Research Unit (CRU)
10. Univ. de Extremadura, Badajoz (Spain). Dept. of Physics; Escuela Politécnica Nacional, Quito (Ecuador). Dept. de Ingenieríia Civil y Ambiental
11. Royal Netherlands Meteorological Inst (KNMI), De Bilt (The Netherlands)
12. Univ. of Gdańsk (Poland). Inst. of Geography
13. Univ. of Helsinki (Finland). Dept. of Geosciences and Geography
14. Météo-France, Direction de la Climatologie, Toulouse (France)
15. Karlsruhe Inst. of Technology (KIT) (Germany). Inst. for Meteorology and Climate Research (IMK)
16. Justus Liebig Univ., Giessen (Germany). Dept. of Geography, Climatology, Climate Dynamics and Climate Change
17. Univ. degli Studi di Milano, Milan (Italy). Dept. of Physics
18. Società Meteorologica Italiana (SMI), Turin (Italy)
19. Stockholm Univ. (Sweden). Dept. of Physical Geography, and Bolin Centre for Climate Research
20. Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia (SC). Dept. of Geography
21. Univ. Aix-Marseille, Aix-en-Provence (France). Dept. of History
22. McGill Univ., Montreal (Canada). Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies on Montreal
23. Jagiellonian Univ., Cracow (Poland). Dept. of Climatology
24. Univ. of Lisbon (Portugal). Inst. Dom Luiz
25. ERT, Inc., Asheville, NC (United States)

Publication Date:

Thu Aug 06 00:00:00 EDT 2015

Research Org.:

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF)

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE Office of Science (SC), Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment Program (INCITE)

OSTI Identifier:

1565395

Grant/Contract Number:  

CRSII2-147659; 200021_146599 / 1

Resource Type:

Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:

Climate of the Past (Online)

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Name: Climate of the Past (Online); Journal Volume: 11; Journal Issue: 8; Journal ID: ISSN 1814-9332

Publisher:

European Geophysical Union - Copernicus

Country of Publication:

United States

Language:

English

Subject:

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; geology; meteorology & atmospheric sciences