Precipitation in the Past Millennium in Europe—Extension to Roman Times

Abstract

This project aimed at describing the evolution of precipitation and its variability over Europe and the Mediterranean over the last two millennia. We present results from dynamical downscaling, showing the added value of regional climate models in the paleoclimate context. The regional models improve the representation of precipitation patterns and variability compared to the raw global climate model output and indicate periods with warmer/drier and colder/wetter summer conditions throughout the last two millennia, including for instance the Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice Age. Additionally, based on the regional simulations pseudoproxies are generated to test the analog method and Bayesian inference. The application of the Bayesian and analog methods to pseudoproxies show reasonable skill and can be used as a statistical tools for the reconstruction of hydrological-sensitive proxy data and might be appropriate methods to be applied to real proxies in the future.