The tenth IMSC, Beijing, China, 2007 - International Meetings on ...

ari@ludens.elte.hu
J. Bartholy
Dept. of Meteorology, Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary
In order to cover several centuries of the past climate, various proxy data series play an
essential role since regular meteorological observations being reliable started only in the
1800s. Among many others, the proxy climate sources include the historical documentary data.
Written documentary sources can be used to evaluate the occurrence, duration and
geographical location of climatic events of the past centuries when no or only scarce
instrumental time series are available. For the Carpathian basin (located in Central/Eastern
Europe), Antal Réthly (a Hungarian climatologist of the 20th century) collected historical
documents in their original form containing meteorology-related information into the
2500-page-long book series, titled 'Meteorological events and natural disasters in the
Carpathian basin'. In order to facilitate the detailed analysis of this documentary collection, a
special code system using hierarchical subclasses has been defined. <strong>The</strong> applied code
system distinguishes three main categories of climate information: temperature, precipitation
and wind related events, containing about 3800, 10000, and 1300 information items,
respectively. Furthermore, the three level subclass system involves 10 second-level classes
and 61 third-level classes. In case of temperature related documents, reports on cold
conditions dominate (65%), while in case of wind related events, most of the archive records
mention the strength. Precipitation information takes 66% of the total collection and the most
often reported event is the 'rain', which can be explained by the source types (many estate
records and account rolls) and by the agricultural importance of water. Other frequent classes
of precipitation are 'thunderstorm', 'hail', 'flood', and 'drought'. Besides the event classification,
the coded database contains full geographical information about the location of the
meteorological events (e.g., settlement, geographical coordinates, and subregion
identification). Spatial and temporal distribution of precipitation, temperature, and wind related
climate events and extremes have been investigated using both settlement and subregional
scales. Geographical distribution of extreme climate events has been mapped. Decadal,
annual, and seasonal time series have been analysed for the Carpathian Basin, and compared
to other reconstructed temperature and precipitation index time series from other geographical
locations in Central/Eastern Europe.
Prediction of Monsoon rainfall over Peninsular India using parameters over Arabian Sea and
adjacent seas
Rajesh J
Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Cochin University of Science and Technology
rajeshj@cusat.ac.in
Lorna R. Nayagam
Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Cochin University of Science and Technology
H. S. Ram Mohan
Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Cochin University of Science and Technology
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