The Mediterranean climate is affected by tropical, subtropical and
mid-latitude systems simultaneously. In consequence, its climate is determined both by the mid-latitude circulation
and the monsoonal systems developed in both, the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The connection between the mid-latitudes
and the Mediterranean climate is relatively well understood, in part due to the existence of climatic indexes such
as the “North Atlantic Oscillation Index” whose record span more than 200 years. On the other hand, the determination of the Mediterranean dependence on the tropical circulation is usually damped
by the absence of long instrumental indices analogous to that of the NAO for the tropics. This fact limits our
understanding of the tropics-Mediterranean relationship to studies based in relatively short time periods or in
pure modelling. To improve our understanding of this subjet, the generation of new instrumental climatic indexes
over the tropics is mandatory.
These new series should be long enough to allow for the characterisation of the climatic variability at secular
scales. Only very recently, a new methodology based in the analysis of old logbook data have been set up to build
reliable atmospheric circulation indices based in observations in areas where no other observations are available
(such as the tropics). With this motivation, this proposal sets two main objectives:
The generation of new instrumental climatic indexes to
characterise the atmospheric circulation associated to the Asian monsoon, the African monsoon and the
Mediterranean basin.
The application of these indices to the analysis of the
Mediterranean climatic variability at secular scales.
Among the expected results are:
The development of a new generation of climatic indices for
the monsoon.
The assessment of the synoptic scale climatic patterns related
to extremes of the new indices.
Determination of the combined effect over Mediterranean climate
variability of the mid-latitudes and monsoonal circulations.
The variability at secular scale of the climatic patterns
related to the new indices, with enphasis in the analysis of the spatiotemporal estability of the relation.
Key words: ICOADS, monsoon, ENSO, WASM, ISM, WNPSM, Australian summer monsoon, Etesian winds
Research funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the project CGL2013-44530-P and
the grant BES-2014-069733.
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