Exceptional rates of warming recorded at global, regional and local scales within contemporary instrumental records require longer-term records for comparison, on time scales of centuries to millennia. Systematic meteorological measurements only provide a relatively short time scale of record, with documentary evidence and natural climate proxies used for the reconstruction and understanding of longer term past climate variability. This session welcomes presentations related to various associated aspects:
- early instrumental meteorological measurements, their history and use for the long-term series
- documentary evidence and its features (advantages, disadvantages, limits)
- natural climate proxies and its features (advantages, disadvantages, limits)
- methodological improvements and analysis of climate reconstruction approaches both from documentary evidence and natural climatic proxies
- results of climate reconstructions over different regions based on various climatic sources
- hydrological and meteorological extremes (e.g. floods, hurricanes, windstorms, tornadoes, hailstorms, frosts) and their human impacts in relation to climate variability
- climate modelling and comparison of model outputs with reconstructed/observed climatological data
- past impacts of climate variability on natural processes and human society
- past and recent perception of the climate and its variability
- history of meteorology and meteorological and climatological knowledge
- discussion of natural and anthropogenic forcings as well as recent warming at global, regional and local scales in a long-term context.