Changes and variability of spring-summer air temperature in Czechia during the past 300 years: comparison of instrumental, documentary and natural proxy data

Abstract

Instrumental series, documentary and natural proxy air temperature reconstructions from the area of Czechia were employed to demonstrate spring/summer temporal variability and changes during the 1701–2010 period. Various statistical methods were applied to evaluate cold/warm periods, extreme seasons, oscillations and trends of individual series and also differences between them. Additional reconstructions from the Western and Central Europe were added to examine the role of geographical distance and type of climatological reconstruction. Instrumental series and documentary reconstructions agree well on the occurrence of cold/warm periods and extremes. There is a higher concentration of cold periods during the 18th and particularly 19th centuries. All of the series convincingly represent a positive temperature trend related to anthropogenic global warming. A tree-ring reconstruction contains a larger proportion of low-frequency signal. Despite spatial distance it has been recognized that an affinitive series such as tree-ring analyses from mountainous areas or reconstructions dealing with grape harvest-dates records share a vast extent of mutual variability.