Historical climatology, 1950-2006

Abstract

This article presents an overview of the development of historical climatology during the past 50 years and how this discipline has contributed to a better understanding of past, present and future climate change. It not only shows how historical climatology has evolved from mainly the social sciences as a special field of research and how it operates, but also how it has spread among institutes, universities and meteorological services throughout Europe.Historical climatology studies written sources providing indirect information on weather conditions, ranging from rainfall, temperatures and air pressure to extreme weather events. Discussing the wide range of written sources, it is explained what kind of a climate signal they provide and how historical climatology has used this indirect climate information or proxy data by developing a methodology of its own, which aims to transfer the proxy data into reconstructed temperatures, rainfall and air pressure time series. Then the contribution of historical climatology to a better understanding of climate variability and its impact of the recent millennium will be discussed by showing the results reached so far. In this respect the paper strongly focuses on temperature change which occurred during the Little Ice Age and in particular the Maunder Minimum and weather extremes such as storm surges and their impact. Finally, perspectives for further research are discussed by focusing on the Low Countries.