Monitoring European average temperature based on the E‐OBS gridded data set

A European average temperature with monthly resolution is constructed based on the E‐OBS daily data set with near real‐time updates for monitoring. Taken together, the European average temperature and the associated gridded daily maps of surface temperature from the E‐OBS data set provide a detailed record of European climate variability and change since 1950. Both are based on validated station data provided by the European National Meteorological and Hydrological Services. A quantitative analysis of the uncertainty sources to the European average temperature indicates that the uncertainties due to urbanization, statistical interpolation, and the potential inhomogeneities in the input records to E‐OBS dominate the total uncertainty estimate. In the aggregation of the interpolation uncertainty from the daily to the monthly level and then to a European averaged value, the effective sample size and the effective spatial degrees of freedom are estimated to account for spatial and temporal coherency in the uncertainty estimates. The European average temperature shows that 7 years of the top 10 warmest years are from the period starting as recent as the year 2000 and a clear upward trend in annual average temperatures over the last few decades is visible. The most recent year in the top 10 coldest years is 1987. It also shows that warming in Europe is accelerating compared to the warming over the global land masses and to a lesser extent compared to the Northern Hemisphere land masses over the period 1980–2010.

[1]  P. Jones,et al.  Updated high‐resolution grids of monthly climatic observations – the CRU TS3.10 Dataset , 2014 .

[2]  E. Fischer,et al.  Changes in European summer temperature variability revisited , 2012 .

[3]  P. Jones,et al.  Synoptic messages to extend climate data records , 2012 .

[4]  P. Jones,et al.  Hemispheric and large-scale land-surface air temperature variations: An extensive revision and an update to 2010: LAND-SURFACE TEMPERATURE VARIATIONS , 2012 .

[5]  P. Jones,et al.  A Southeastern South American Daily Gridded Dataset of Observed Surface Minimum and Maximum Temperature for 1961–2000 , 2011 .

[6]  E. Fischer,et al.  The hot summer of 2010: redrawing the temperature record map of Europe. , 2011, Science.

[7]  J. Thepaut,et al.  The ERA‐Interim reanalysis: configuration and performance of the data assimilation system , 2011 .

[8]  J. Hansen,et al.  GLOBAL SURFACE TEMPERATURE CHANGE , 2010 .

[9]  G. Schrier,et al.  The construction of a Central Netherlands temperature , 2010 .

[10]  Jean-Noël Thépaut,et al.  Northern Hemisphere atmospheric stilling partly attributed to an increase in surface roughness , 2010 .

[11]  Pascal Yiou,et al.  Winter 2010 in Europe: A cold extreme in a warming climate , 2010 .

[12]  W. Landman.  Climate change 2007: the physical science basis , 2010 .

[13]  David Lister,et al.  The urban heat island in Central London and urban‐related warming trends in Central London since 1900 , 2009 .

[14]  E. J. Klok,et al.  Updated and extended European dataset of daily climate observations , 2009 .

[15]  P. Jones,et al.  The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project , 2009 .

[16]  R. Vautard,et al.  Origins of the extremely warm European fall of 2006 , 2009 .

[17]  C. Frei,et al.  Comparison of six methods for the interpolation of daily, European climate data , 2008 .

[18]  P. Jones,et al.  A European daily high-resolution gridded data set of surface temperature and precipitation for 1950-2006 , 2008 .

[19]  Wilco Hazeleger,et al.  Western Europe is warming much faster than expected , 2008, 0806.0715.

[20]  T. Brandsma,et al.  Thermometer screen intercomparison in De Bilt (the Netherlands)—Part II: description and modeling of mean temperature differences and extremes , 2008 .

[21]  Annette Menzel,et al.  Exceptional European warmth of autumn 2006 and winter 2007: Historical context, the underlying dynamics, and its phenological impacts , 2007 .

[22]  W. Briggs.  Statistical Methods in the Atmospheric Sciences , 2007 .

[23]  P. Jones,et al.  Uncertainty estimates in regional and global observed temperature changes: A new data set from 1850 , 2006 .

[24]  David Parker,et al.  A Demonstration That Large-Scale Warming Is Not Urban , 2006 .

[25]  A. Sterl,et al.  The ERA‐40 re‐analysis , 2005 .

[26]  Nils Wedi,et al.  Comparison of trends and low-frequency variability in CRU, ERA-40, and NCEP//NCAR analyses of surface air temperature , 2004 .

[27]  D. Parker.  Climate: Large-scale warming is not urban , 2004, Nature.

[28]  H. Wanner,et al.  European Seasonal and Annual Temperature Variability, Trends, and Extremes Since 1500 , 2004, Science.

[29]  Theo Brandsma,et al.  Empirical estimation of the effect of urban heat advection on the temperature series of De Bilt (The Netherlands) , 2003 .

[30]  G. Können,et al.  Homogeneity of 20th century European daily temperature and precipitation series , 2003 .

[31]  P. Jones,et al.  Hemispheric and Large-Scale Surface Air Temperature Variations: An Extensive Revision and an Update to 2001. , 2003 .

[32]  Anders Moberg,et al.  Daily dataset of 20th‐century surface air temperature and precipitation series for the European Climate Assessment , 2002 .

[33]  Thomas M. Smith,et al.  Global temperature change and its uncertainties since 1861 , 2001 .

[34]  J. Yamamoto.  An Alternative Measure of the Reliability of Ordinary Kriging Estimates , 2000 .

[35]  C. Bretherton,et al.  The Effective Number of Spatial Degrees of Freedom of a Time-Varying Field , 1999 .

[36]  R. Vose,et al.  An Overview of the Global Historical Climatology Network Temperature Database , 1997 .

[37]  Keith R. Briffa,et al.  Estimating Sampling Errors in Large-Scale Temperature Averages , 1997 .

[38]  M. F. Hutchinson,et al.  Interpolating Mean Rainfall Using Thin Plate Smoothing Splines , 1995, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[39]  Jonathan Cohen.  Statistical Methods in Soil and Land Resource Survey , 1992 .

[40]  F. Zwiers,et al.  The interpretation and estimation of effective sample size , 1984 .

[41]  R. Quentin Grafton,et al.  global surface temperature , 2012 .

[42]  M. New,et al.  The influence of interpolation and station network density on the distributions and trends of climate variables in gridded daily data , 2010 .

[43]  P. Linden,et al.  ENSEMBLES: Climate Change and its Impacts - Summary of research and results from the ENSEMBLES project , 2009 .

[44]  T. Wilbanks,et al.  Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , 2007 .

[45]  David Parker,et al.  Effects of changing exposure of thermometers at land stations , 1994 .