ClimeApp: Opening Doors to the Past Global Climate. New Data Processing Tool for the ModE-RA Climate Reanalysis

ClimeApp is a newly developed web-based processing tool for the state-of-the-art ModE-RA paleo-climate reanalysis. It presents temperature, precipitation and pressure reconstructions with global coverage and monthly resolution for the period 1422 to 2008 C.E. These can be visualized as maps or timeseries and compared with historical or other climate-related information through composite, correlation and regression functions. Alongside ModE-RA, ClimeApp allows access to the ModE-Sim climate simulation, which is the basis of ModE-RA before assimilating early instrumental, documentary and proxy data. Together with the sensitivity experiment ModE-RAclim, these three data sets allow researchers to separate the effects of external forcing from internal climate variability. The app is designed to allow quick data processing for climatologists and easy use for non-climatologists. Specifically, it aims to help bring climate into the humanities, where climatological data still has huge potential to advance research. This paper outlines the development, processing and applications of ClimeApp, and presents an updated analysis of the calamitous Tambora volcanic eruption and the 1816 ‘year without a summer’ in Europe, using the new ModE datasets.

ClimeApp is available at https://mode-ra.unibe.ch/climeapp/_blanknoopenerhttps://mode-ra.unibe.ch/climeapp/.