Climate variations in the eastern Mediterranean over the last centuries

1. 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 Giessen elena.xoplaki@geogr.uni-giessen.de

2. Outline • The Mediterranean Basin • Multi-proxy summer temperature reconstruction • Coupled MM5 – ECHO-G RCM • Medieval Climate Anomaly, Little Ice Age • Conclusions

3. The Mediterranean Sea, orography, 46.000 km coastline One eco-region: 10% of vegetation species, 7% of marine species 21 countries and the EU, Contracting Parties to the Barcelona Convention 430 Mio inhab., 7% world population, 13% world GDP, 33% international tourism

4. Vulnerability in the Mediterranean Deforestation, afforestation, desertification Land degradation Food production, food security Livelihood Civil security, migration Political conflicts Health, vector borne and tick borne diseases Energy demand, energy generation, solar, wind

5. Eastern Mediterraneanterrestrial and marine proxies Lelieveld, Xoplaki et al. 2012 • length of the proxies varies • proxies 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 year • proxies have a different temporal resolution (from daily to multi-decadal)

6. Eastern Mediterraneansummer temperature reconstruction Lelieveld, Xoplaki et al. 2012

7. New summer temperature reconstruction

8. Simulated and reconstructedNH temperature changes Masson-Delmotte et al., 2013IPCC AR5, WGI, Chapter 5

9. Proxy time series Hardly any temperatureinformation PAGES Euro-Med 2k Consortium in prep.

10. Reconstruction approach

11. MCA LIA 20th Summer temperature anomalymulti-proxy reconstruction - EMed PAGES Euro-Med consortium in prep

12. The MM5 – ECHO-G model

13. Regional model setup • 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 45 km resolution domain implemented in the regional simulations Gómez-Navarro et al. Clim. Past 2013

14. ECHO-G / OETZI2 external forcings OETZI2 • Driven by ECHO-G: • Atmospheric-Ocean CoupledGeneral Circulation Model • Spectral model (T30) • Prescribed external forcings high uncertainty volcanic activity  no volcanic forcing Hünicke et al. 2010

15. Summer temperature anomalyEastern Mediterranean

16. MCA minus LIASummer

18. 500hPa differences MCA minus LIA

19. 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

20. Thank you very muchfor your attention!