Climatology Group
Mission: We study high-resolution climate variability through the analysis of tree rings and other palaeoclimate archives at regional to global scales. Instrumental climate data are evaluated and used for the calibration of these archives to reconstruct climate over the past couple hundred to thousand years. We teach introductory and methodological courses on climatology with emphasis on spatial patterns and long-term changes of climate and ecological variability.
Recent paper: The unparalleled warming of 2023
We combine observed and reconstructed June–August surface air temperatures to show that 2023 was the warmest Northern Hemisphere extra-tropical summer over the past 2,000 years exceeding the 95% confidence range of natural climate variability by more than 0.5 °C.
Details can be found here: Esper et al. (2024) Nature 631, 94-97