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| Titel |
New early instrumental series since the beginning of the 19th century in eastern Iberia (Valencia, Spain) |
| VerfasserIn |
Arturo Sanchez-Lorenzo, Mariano Barriendos, Elena Guinaldo, Joan A. Lopez-Bustins |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2010
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 12 (2010) |
| Datensatznummer |
250038110
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Early instrumental series are the main source for climate information in the 18th and the first
part of the 19th century, which is when systematic meteorological observations started in
most national meteorological services. The first continuous series in Spain starts in 1780 in
Barcelona due to meteorological observations made by the medical doctor Francisco
Salvá Campillo. Moreover, only two other series have been recovered at the present
in Spain: Madrid and Cádiz/San Fernando. Until present, in Spain the major part
of the meteorological observations detected in early instrumental periods were
made by medical doctors, who started to pay attention to the environmental factors
influencing population health under the Hippocrates oath, although also there are
military institutions and academic university staff (e.g. physicists, mathematicians,
etc.).
Due to the high spatial and temporal climate variability in the Iberian Peninsula, it is
important to recover and digitize more climatic series, and this is one of the main goals of the
Salvá-Sinobas project (http://salva-sinobas.uvigo.es/) funded by the Spanish Ministry of
Environment, and Rural and Marine Affairs for the 2009-2011 period. The first new series
with systematic observations was detected in the city of Valencia, in the eastern façade of the
Iberian Peninsula. The meteorological observations were daily published in the
newspapers Diario de Valencia (1804-1834) and Diario Mercantil de Valencia
(1837-1863) until official meteorological observations started in 1858 at the University
of Valencia. Each day 3-daily observations (morning, midday, afternoon) were
published with five climatic variables: temperature, air pressure, humidity, wind
direction and the sky state. Only during the 1804-1808 period daily rainfall data is
available.
We checked the observer comments published in the newspapers to obtain metadata about
the instruments and meteorological station information. Unfortunately, temperature data was
recorded indoor and unknown hygrometer was used during the first decades until 1841. One
curious detail of the Valencia early instrumental series is that the records were initiated by a
local clockmaker, a new profession interested in meteorological observations in Spain during
this period. A great effort has been made to detect original manuscripts, but the archive
revision did not provide encouraging results.
We started to digitalize daily air pressure records, to improve atmospheric circulation
reconstruction in the Mediterranean region, and the sky observations (defined as cloud free,
cloudy or overcast conditions), since we are interested into reconstruct cloud cover variability
since early 19th century in Valencia. Finally, due to the lack of metadata about wind
direction, we tried to assess the reliability of these measurements using the daily Western
Mediterranean Oscillation index (WeMOi), a regional circulation pattern in the western
Mediterranean basin. Wind direction records in Valencia were registered in 32 class intervals.
The negative phase of the WeMOi is linked to those intervals associated to easterly humid
flows. |
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