Climate variations in the eastern Mediterranean over the

last centuries

Elena Xoplaki, Jürg LuterbacherJuan José Gómez-Navarro, Eduardo Zorita, Johannes Werner, Christos

ZerefosPAGES Euro-Med 2k Consortium

Justus-Liebig-University Giessenelena.xoplaki@geogr.uni-giessen.de

Outline

• The Mediterranean Basin• Multi-proxy summer temperature

reconstruction• Coupled MM5 – ECHO-G RCM• Medieval Climate Anomaly, Little Ice

Age• Conclusions

The Mediterranean

Sea, orography, 46.000 km coastlineOne eco-region: 10% of vegetation species, 7% of marine species21 countries and the EU, Contracting Parties to the Barcelona

Convention430 Mio inhab., 7% world population, 13% world GDP, 33%

international tourism

Vulnerability in the Mediterranean

Deforestation, afforestation, desertificationLand degradationFood production, food securityLivelihoodCivil security, migrationPolitical conflictsHealth, vector borne and tick borne diseasesEnergy demand, energy generation, solar, wind

length of the proxies variesproxies reflect different climate information (temperature, precipitation, sea level changes, pH, sea water temperature, water mass circulation, etc.)proxies may record climate conditions at different times of the yearproxies have a different temporal resolution (from daily to multi-decadal)

Eastern Mediterraneanterrestrial and marine proxies

Lelieveld, Xoplaki et al. 2012

Eastern Mediterraneansummer temperature

reconstruction

Lelieveld, Xoplaki et al. 2012

New summer temperature reconstruction

Simulated and reconstructed

NH temperature changes

Masson-Delmotte et al., 2013

IPCC AR5, WGI, Chapter 5

Proxy time series

Hardly any temperatureinformation

PAGES Euro-Med 2k Consortium in prep.

Reconstruction approach

20thLIAMCA

Summer temperature anomaly

multi-proxy reconstruction - EMed

PAGES Euro-Med consortium in prep

The MM5 – ECHO-G model

Regional model setup

45 km resolution domain implemented in the regional simulations

Modified climate version of the MM5 (mesoscale meteorological model)

Parameterizations chosen to reduce computational cost and retaining accurate skill

Boundaries updated every 12 hours

No spectral nudging Two domains of 135 and 45 km

Gómez-Navarro et al. Clim. Past 2013

ECHO-G / OETZI2 external forcings

OETZI2 Driven by ECHO-G:

Atmospheric-Ocean CoupledGeneral Circulation Model

Spectral model (T30) Prescribed external forcingshigh uncertainty volcanic activity no

volcanic forcingHünicke et al. 2010

Summer temperature anomalyEastern Mediterranean

MCA minus LIASummer

500hPa differences MCA minus LIA

Conclusions

• Lack of annually resolved climate proxies in the area

• High temporal and spatial resolution summer temperature reconstruction

• The recent summer temperatures seem not to be unprecedented in the context of the last millennium

• High resolution RCM allows for accurate spatial structure of climate variability, in a complex terrain

• RCM strong warming in the 20th century connected with the lack of net cooling by tropospheric aerosols