PRecipitation In past Millennia in Europe - Extension - back to Roman times

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PRIME-2 will study the climate and the hydrological cycle in Europe and the Mediterranean area over the last 2,000 years, by combining information from low and high resolution terrestrial and marine proxy data. We will apply novel sophisticated statistical methods (Bayesian Hierarchical Modeling) and high-resolution climate modeling to reconstruct spatial fields of temperature and precipitation with associated uncertainties. Emphasis will be placed on the estimations of the amplitudes of natural climate variations at different temporal and spatial scales, ranging from regional to continental, and on the estimation of the influence of large-scale temperatures and external forcings on the European/Mediterranean hydrological regimes. We will also focus on the climate transitions between natural warm and cold / wet and dry periods from present back to Roman times and study the potential implications for past societies. The influence of external forcing factors such as orbital, solar and land use changes on the hydrological cycle will be disentangled by conducting a series of regional climate simulations with different forcing configurations for specific periods. These will also be used as a test bed to check the robustness of the statistical methods applied to reconstruct temperature and precipitation.