Climate can be defined as an ensemble of many weather phenomena. Clima- tologists often use the mean (conventionally the monthly and annual mean) of weather-related parameters to describe climate. The mean value, however, is not all the climate. Climatic changes might occur if certain aspects of the distribution of extreme values change, while the mean does not. Katz and Brown (1992), for example, show from a theoretical viewpoint that in a changing climate, extreme values are determined more by changes in variability than changes in the mean. Possible changes in extreme event frequency...

This is the first book to report the data and the metadata of the seven longest European series of temperature and pressure observations, dating back to the 18th century. Data are reported in daily resolution that is fundamental for high frequency climate variability and extreme events analysis.
The book includes a CD-ROM that contains the data, providing a unique opportunity to study climate change starting prior to the period of the industrial era. The observational errors of early and modern instruments are discussed in order to apply these results to other case studies, so as to...