The Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) initiative

1. The Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) initiative Dr Rob Allan, ACRE Project Manager, Climate Monitoring and Attribution Group, Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, Devon, United Kingdom QCCCE

2. What is ACRE? ACRE is an international collaborative initiative led by a consortium of: • the Queensland Climate Change Centre of Excellence (QCCCE) in Australia • the Met Office Hadley Centre in the UK • the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) and Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado

3. What will ACRE do? Seamlessly: • Facilitate the recovery of historical instrumental surface terrestrial and marine global weather observations • to underpin 4D weather reconstructions (reanalyses) over the last 200-250 years • for climate applications and impacts needs worldwide. It will produce: • dynamically consistent, high resolution global historical 4D weather reconstructions at 2o latitude by 2o longitude spatial resolution every 6 hours using state-of-the-art scientific capabilities (in the future, 1/2o spatial resolution) • a baseline of 4D weather reconstructions that can be tailored and ‘downscaled’ for: • regional to local climate applications, e.g., agricultural, environmental, societal, physical • climate impacts, e.g., risk of high impact phenomena • direct weather input into biophysical and production models • an historical baseline of global weather that can be used to constrain global climate models, putting them in a much stronger position to look into the future at possible implications and impacts of climate change.

4. Three surface input only historical reanalyses generating 6-hourly 4D atmospheric weather variables 20th Century Reanalysis Project: 1891-present(supported in US by NOAA & DoE) Surface Input Reanalysis for Climate Applications (SIRCA) (1840s-2011) North Atlantic-European Region: 1750-present Climate research, applications & impacts community needs & direct feed into biophysical models O L D W E A T H E R Ecological Phenological Health & Disease Reinsurance Climate Monitoring Model Validation Global historical surface daily to sub-daily weather observations Environmental Assessments Extremes, Impacts & Risks Water resources Agricultural Forestry Energy Marine operations Fisheries Cultural landscapes & built heritage and downscaling QCCCE

5. Digitised Global Surface Observational Coverage (%) Data needs for ACRE-facilitated Historical Reanalyses of 4D weather conditions ERA & NCEP POTENTIAL COVERAGE World War 2 World War 1 ‘PRIOR TO WORLD WAR 2, AS MUCH SURFACE DATA HASN’T BEEN DIGITISED AS HAS BEEN’

6. GCOS AOPC/OOPC Surface Pressure Working Group International Surface Pressure Data Bank ftp://ftp.cdc.noaa.gov/pub/Public/gcompo/ISPDv2.2/ ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/ispd/v2.2/Station_Map/ DATA RESCUE (MEDARE MedCLIVAR IEDRO SIGN) ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION RECONSTRUCTIONS OVER THE EARTH NATIONAL METEOROLOGICAL SERVICES (ECSN, ETCCDI, VACS, CMA, MeteoFrance) GLOBE TERRESTRIAL DATA MARINE DATA R E C L A I M NCDC http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html CDMP http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/cdmp/ ICOADS http://icoads.noaa.gov/ HISTORICAL CLIMATE QUALITY REANALYSES

7. Activities in recovering, imaging and digitising historical marine and terrestrial observations • 2007/2009:British East India Company (EIC) logbooks (1780s-1830s) – held in the British Library (imaging by British Library, digitised by CDMP in US) 900 of the 2,000 logs have instrumental data [200K images]http://www.oldweather.org/examples/east-india-company • 2008/2009:Extended World War 1 period logbooks (1914-1923) - held in the UK National Archives (imaging by UK National Archives) 7,000 to8,000 logs [300K+ images] • 2007/2008:Printed/published logbooks of late 19th- early 20th Century Antarctic expeditions plus ships of exploration – online plus held in the Met Office Library & Archives (imaging & digitisation) http://www.oldweather.org/examples/TerraNova • 2008:Inventory of historical Chinese and South China Sea instrumental weather observations - an initiative in conjunction with Professor Robert Bickers, Department of Historical Studies, Bristol University and Chinese Maritime Customs Project, to produce an inventory of all the sources of historical Chinese and South China Sea region terrestrial and marine daily to sub-daily meteorological data. • 2008:British hydrographic and survey vessel remarks books (1834-1909) – held at the UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO) (inventory of holdings in the archives of the UKHO) about 6,000 remarks books • 2009/2010: CoRRal: UK Colonial registers and Royal Naval Logbooks – held at The National Archives (imaging and digitising logbooks of ships on voyages of discovery 1700-1850: ADM-55, and attached to the Hydrographic Survey 1830-1850) plus held at The National Archives and the Met Office Archives (UK colonial meteorological registers, journals and gazettes 1840-present). CoRRal: a Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Digitisation Programme: Enriching Digital Resources funded project.

8. Global Historical Reanalyses Products Each of the ACRE-facilitated global historical reanalyses will produce a 56* member ensemble of some 68 4D weather variables every 6 hours at 2° latitude x 2° longitude spatial resolution over the entire globe. The ensemble mean is taken as the best analysis. Some major 4D weather variables produced by the reanalyses Geopotential Height Temperature u wind v wind Pressure vertical velocity Specific humidity Relative humidity At 19 Levels: (1000 hPa–100 hPa every 50 hpa) Others at specific levels (eg, sigma) or over the depth of the atmospheric column include: Surface pressure, Tropopause height, Precipitable water, Convective Avail. Pot. Energy, Convective inhibition, Potential temp. Total ozone, Cloud water, Sensible heat flux, Latent heat flux, Volumetric soil moisture, Accum. Snow, Downward long wave flux, Upward long wave flux, Upward short wave flux, Downward short wave flux, Precipitation rate, Convective precip. Rate, Ground heat flux, Land cover, Ice concentration, Water runoff, Potential evaporation rate, Planetary boundary layer height, Albedo, Total cloud cover, Zonal momentum flux, Meridional momentum flux. * started in November of year before, 56 random initial conditions produced from integrations of the T62 28 sigma level model forced by SSTs

9. MOHC, CRU, SU, ECMWF, POL (Blue shadings are for potential projects submitted to funding bodies) KNMI UBERN, ETHZ NOAA ESRL/CIRES SENABAR BALTEX ECED/ NiCHE National Marine Sanctuaries Météo-France ECSN EuroCryoClim SIGN Med - CLIVAR & MEDARE CDMP NCDC Chinese Maritime Customs Project US Colonial Era Data Study ICCSIR CHANGE QCCCE USQ Chilean Chapter NIWA BoM NCC, CMAR Southeastern Australia Chapter UCT International Projects, Sources & Repositories linked to ACRE IEDRO ICOADS ISPD WMO DARE RECLAIM GLOBE GLOSS ETCCDI VACS ICHM ERA-CLIM EURO4M

10. ACRE-linked Climate Applications and Impacts Projects Extremes, climate modes and reanalysis-based approaches to agricultural resilience: Funder: Land & Water Australia, Managing Climate Variability Innovation Call project, commenced in September 2008. FUNDING TO ACRE Reconstructing pre-20th century rainfall, temperature and pressure for South-eastern Australia using palaeoclimate, documentary and early weather station data: Funder: Proposal for an Australian Research Council Linkage Project 2009 SENABAR "Storminess since 1800 as interpreted from European and North Atlantic BARometric pressure variability": Funder: To be submitted as a proposal to the 1 December 2008 Standard Grant round of UK NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) ERA-CLIM: Development of a European Reanalysis Capability for Global Climate Monitoring: Funder: Proposal to the EC FP7 – Seventh Framework Programme Cooperation Theme 9 “Space” EURO4M: European Reanalysis and Observations for Monitoring: Funder: Proposal to the EC FP7 – Seventh Framework Programme Cooperation Theme 9 “Space” CHANGE for Africa - Climate Helps Africans Negotiate Greater Efficiencies: Funder:Proposal to the EC FP7 – Seventh Framework Programme Cooperation, Area 6.1.1.5: Climate change natural and socio-economic impacts Chilean Chapter of ACRE: Funder: Proposal to the EC FP7 - Seventh Framework Programme Cooperation. Devon Community Climate Change Local Histories Project (CCHP): Funder: UK Heritage Lottery Fund, commenced in September 2008. NO FUNDING TO ACRE

11. New partners in ACRE • Early Canada Environmental Data/Network in Canadian History & Environment (ECED/NiCHE) (http://niche.uwo.ca/early-canada-environmental-data.html): • NiCHE brings together historians, geographers, and other researchers who study nature and humans in Canada's past. It offers a forum for the field, support collaboration among scholars, and ensure that this research is shared with policymakers, scientists, and the Canadian public. ECED is a component of NiCHE, and its aims are: • to assemble digital resources that facilitate the study of historical data on Canadian environments • to design tools and explore different methods to work with such data • to bring together existing datasets and to create new databases. • This partnership will aid ACRE’s needs to link into ongoing Canadian historical data and research activities plus their outreach and outputs to community and user needs. • The Sea Around Us Project (SAUP) (http://www.seaaroundus.org/): • ACRE is exploring a potential collaboration with this initiative. SAUP is investigating the impact of fisheries on the world's marine ecosystems. This is achieved by using a Geographic Information System (GIS) to map global fisheries catches from 1950 to the present, under explicit consideration of major critical habitats of fish, marine invertebrates, marine mammals and other components of marine biodiversity. The data presented, which are freely available, are meant to support studies of global fisheries trends and the development of sustainable, ecosystem-based fisheries policies.

12. PROJECTED/POTENTIAL TIMELINE Mid-2009:The 20th Century Reanalysis Project: 1891 to present Version 1: 1908-1958: Available – we have a terabyte disc of ensemble means Version 2: 1891-2008 available Mid-2009 Mid-2009: British East India Company (EIC) logbooks (1780s-1830s) Imaged & Digitised 2009-2010: Final version of HadISST2 2010-2011: Extended World War 1 period logbooks (1914-1923) Imaged & Digitised 2009-2011: Early to mid-19th Century Reanalysis (with DoE and NOAA support) Version 3: mid-19th – 21st century would need all data by August 2010 improved version of NCEP model at higher resolution => hurricanes, high impact phenomena? potentially available in 2012 201?: British hydrographic and survey vessel remarks books (1834-1909) Imaging & Digitisation 201?: North Atlantic-European Region mid18th-early 19th Century Reanalysis: 1750/1800 to present

13. THE FUTURE POTENTIALHistorical surface observations input-only reanalysis of the 1938 Atlantic ‘Long Island Express’ Hurricane: using additional HURDAT data and NCEP NWP T254 (1/2 degree spatial resolution) model

14. ACRE Project ManagerDr Rob Allan Climate Monitoring and Attribution Group, Met Office Hadley CentreE-mail: rob.allan@metoffice.gov.ukAlternative E-mail: allarob@googlemail.comACRE WWW Site: http://www.met-acre.org/Old Weather WWW Site: http://www.oldweather.org/Phone: +44 (0)1392 886904Fax: +44 (0)1392 885681Address: Met OfficeFitzRoy RoadExeter EX1 3PBU.K.