Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: an interdisciplinary approach to Water, Life and Civilisation
- Part I Past, present and future climate
- 2 The present-day climate of the Middle East
- 3 Past climates of the Middle East
- 4 Future climate of the Middle East
- 5 Connecting climate and hydrological models for impacts studies
- Part II The palaeoenvironmental record
- Part III Hydrological studies of the Jordan Valley
- Part IV Human settlement, climate change, hydrology and water management
- Part V Palaeoeconomies and developing archaeological methodologies
- Part VI Society, economy and water today
- Part VII Conclusions
- Index
- Plate section
- References
3 - Past climates of the Middle East
from Part I - Past, present and future climate
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 April 2011
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: an interdisciplinary approach to Water, Life and Civilisation
- Part I Past, present and future climate
- 2 The present-day climate of the Middle East
- 3 Past climates of the Middle East
- 4 Future climate of the Middle East
- 5 Connecting climate and hydrological models for impacts studies
- Part II The palaeoenvironmental record
- Part III Hydrological studies of the Jordan Valley
- Part IV Human settlement, climate change, hydrology and water management
- Part V Palaeoeconomies and developing archaeological methodologies
- Part VI Society, economy and water today
- Part VII Conclusions
- Index
- Plate section
- References
Summary
ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we develop an improved understanding of the Mediterranean's past climate through a series of ‘time-slice’ climate integrations relating to the past 12,000 years, performed using a version of the Met Office Hadley Centre's global climate model (HadSM3). The output is dynamically downscaled using a regional version of the same model to offer unprecedented spatial detail over the Mediterranean. Changes in seasonal surface air temperatures and precipitation are discussed at both global and regional scales along with their underlying physical drivers.
In the experiments the Mediterranean experiences more precipitation in the early Holocene than the late Holocene, although the difference is not uniform across the eastern Mediterranean. The results suggest that there may have been a relatively strong reduction in precipitation over the eastern Mediterranean coast during the period around 6–10 thousand years before present (kaBP). The early Holocene also shows a stronger seasonal cycle of temperature throughout the Northern Hemisphere but, over the northeast Mediterranean, this is mitigated by the influence of milder maritime air carried inland from the coast.
INTRODUCTION
Understanding the changes in the Mediterranean climate during the Holocene period is a challenging problem, but one that is critical to interpreting long-term change in human settlement. The region at present displays marked seasonality with dry, hot summers and cool, wet winters.
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Water, Life and CivilisationClimate, Environment and Society in the Jordan Valley, pp. 25 - 50Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
References
, , , and (2003) Mediterranean moisture source for an Early-Holocene humid period in the Northern Red Sea. Science 300: 118–121.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, , and (2005) Modulation of daily precipitation over Southwest Asia by the Madden-Julian Oscillation. Monthly Weather Review 133: 3579–3594.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1978) Long term variations of daily insolation and Quaternary climatic changes. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 35: 2362–2367.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2009) The impact of climate change on daily precipitation statistics for Jordan and Israel. Atmospheric Science Letters 10: 192–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (2004) Some mechanisms of Mid-Holocene climate change in Europe, inferred from comparing PMIP models to data. Climate Dynamics 23: 79–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , et al. (2007) Results of PMIP2 coupled simulations of the Mid-Holocene and Last Glacial Maximum – Part 1: experiments and large-scale features. Climate of the Past 3: 261–277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (2008) The storm track response to idealised SST perturbations in an aquaplanet GCM. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 65: 2842–2860.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (2009) The basic ingredients of the North Atlantic storm track. Part I: Land–sea contrast and orography. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 66: 2539–2558.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (2010) Some physical drivers of changes in the winter storm tracks over the North Atlantic and Mediterranean during the Holocene. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 368: 5185–5223.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
, , , and (1997) The climate of Europe 6000 years ago. Climate Dynamics 13: 1–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , et al. (1999) Simulation of an abrupt change in Saharan vegetation in the Mid-Holocene. Geophysical Research Letters 26: 2037–2040.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (1995) The Thermodynamic/Dynamic Sea Ice Model. Unified Model Documentation Paper 45 Met Office.
, , , and (2005) Atlantic thermohaline circulation in a coupled general circulation model: Unforced variations versus forced changes. Journal of Climate 18: 3270–3293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , et al. (2003) The temperature of Europe during the Holocene reconstructed from pollen data. Quaternary Science Reviews 22: 1701–1716.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (2006) Shorelines in the Sahara: geomorphological evidence for an enhanced monsoon from palaeolake Megachad. The Holocene 16: 901–911.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (1980) Eliassen-Palm cross sections for the troposphere. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 37: 2600–2616.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , et al. (2005) Mid-Holocene NAO: A PMIP2 model intercomparison. Geophysical Research Letters 32: L16707, DOI:10.1029/2005GL023596.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , et al. (2007) Understanding and attributing climate change. In Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. , , et al. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
, and (2001) The impact of dynamic sea-ice on the climatology and climate sensitivity of a GCM: a study of past, present, and future climates. Climate Dynamics 17: 655–668.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (2002) New perspectives on the Northern Hemisphere winter storm tracks. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 59: 1041–1061.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (1990) On the existence of storm-tracks. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 47: 1854–1864.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and (1983) The shape, propagation and mean-flow interaction of large-scale weather systems. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 40: 1595–1612.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , et al. (2007) Palaeoclimate. In Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. , , et al. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
, , et al. (1998) Biome reconstruction from pollen and plant macrofossil data for Africa and the Arabian peninsula at 0 and 6000 years. Journal of Biogeography 25: 1007–1027.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , et al. (2007) Global climate projections. In Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. , , et al. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
, , et al. (2006) Last Glacial Maximum and Holocene climate in CCSM3. Journal of Climate 19: 2526–2544.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (2000) The impact of new physical parametrizations in the Hadley Centre climate model: HadAM3. Climate Dynamics 16: 123–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , and (2003) Arctic/North Atlantic Oscillation signature in Holocene sea surface temperature trends as obtained from alkenone data. Geophysical Research Letters 30: DOI 10.1029/2002GL016570.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , and (2004) Holocene climate variability as derived from alkenone sea surface temperature and coupled ocean-atmosphere model experiments. Climate Dynamics 23: 215–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and (2001) Subtropical anticyclones and summer monsoons. Journal of Climate 14: 3192–3211.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
. and (1999) Holocene Climate Optimum and Last Glacial Maximum in the Mediterranean: the marine oxygen isotope record. Marine Geology 153: 57–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and (1994) Terrestrial precipitation analysis: Operational method and required density of point measurements. In Global Precipitations and Climate Change, ed. and . Berlin: Springer-Verlag pp. 173–186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1994) Report on aspects of variability in high-resolution versions of HadAM3. Hadley Centre Technical Note 53.Google Scholar
, and (2000) The sea surface temperature and sea-ice concentration boundary conditions for AMIP II simulationsPCMDI Report 60. California: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison.Google Scholar
, and (2000) Sensitivity of the African and Asian monsoons to Mid-Holocene insolation and data-inferred surface changes. Journal of Climate 13: 164–181.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , et al. (2007) Observations: surface and atmospheric climate change. In Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. , , et al. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press pp. 433–497.Google Scholar
, and (1999) Objective climatology of cyclones in the Mediterranean region. Journal of Climate 12: 1685–1696.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , et al. (2005) The ERA-40 re-analysis. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 131: 2961–3012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , et al. (2008) Mid- to late Holocene climate change: an overview. Quaternary Science Reviews 27: 1791–1828.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(1995) Statistical Methods in the Atmospheric Sciences: An Introduction. San Diego: Academic Press.Google Scholar
, , and (1999) Changing spatial structure of the thermohaline circulation in response to atmospheric CO2 forcing in a climate model. Nature 399: 572–575.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(2005) A consistent poleward shift of the storm tracks in simulations of 21st century climate. Geophysical Research Letters 32: DOI 10.1029/2005GL023684.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Accessibility standard: Unknown
Why this information is here
This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.Accessibility Information
Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this chapter is currently unknown
and may be updated in the future.
- 4
- Cited by