Project Objectives
The main aim of the Salvá-Sinobas Project is the characterization focused of climate variability in Iberia during 1750-1850 using documentary sources, natural proxies and global and regional General Circulation Models (GCMs). The project has four specific objectives:
- Compilation and analysis of new documentary evidences, including the earliest instrumental series in Iberia and the abstraction of the complete collection of English logbooks sailing across the Mediterranean.
- Production of new dendrocronological series.
- Climate modeling for the Iberian Peninsula by running the climate version of the MM5 model.
- Creation of a freely accessible data base from these instrumental data, proxies and MM5 outputs for the period 1750-1850.
- Analysis of the climate variability and impacts from the results obtained in the previous sections.
Some reasons to justify the selected time period:
- The anthropogenic GEI effect is marginal. Thus, the detected climate variability will be of natural origin.
- It is the end of the Little Ice Age, so it will allow us to evaluate its impact in Iberia.
- The instrumental weather observations start in this period. The overlapping among them and the different proxies obtained during the project will favor their calibration and the reduction of data uncertainties.
- It includes the Dalton's Minimum (solar activity minimum between 1790-1820) what permits to explore the influence of the solar activity in the Iberian Peninsula climate.
- It was a critical period for the Spanish society. The spanish transoceanic Empire declined during this period originating an economic and institutional crisis. It will be possible to analyze the climatological factors that acted jointly with this societal process.
