Climate anomalies (cold and warm, wet and dry months, seasons, years, decades) and hydro-meteorological extremes (floods, heat waves, windstorms, and small-scale severe weather phenomena such as thunderstorms, hailstorms and tornadoes) can be studied on the basis of systematic observations for the instrumental period covering the decadal or recent centennial time scales. However, in order to understand climatic variations in the pre-anthropogenic era and to establish the return periods and future probabilities of extreme and disastrous events it is important to involve data from the early to pre-instrumental eras. This time-interval is reasonably well covered by documentary data (historical climatology) and information from natural archives (proxy data) which allow comparison well documented anomalies and events from the instrumental period with those from pre-instrumental time which occurred prior to significant anthropogenic forcing.

The session invites papers related to:
- the study of long-term series of temporally highly resolved climate anomalies and hydro-meteorological extremes based on long instrumental and pre-instrumental (documentary and natural proxies) data
- the combination of instrumental, documentary, and natural proxy data for developing long-term series of climate anomalies and extremes
- the understanding of variability in frequency, seasonality, synoptic settings, intensity and human impacts of such climate anomalies and meteorological extremes
- case studies of past disastrous events and anomalies
- the identification and analysis of past analogs of climate anomalies recorded during the recent global warming period
- the establishing of strategies for comparison and joint analysis of model output with documentary and natural proxy evidence