ORIGINAL REFERENCES: 
Casty, C., Raible, C.C., Stocker, T.F., Luterbacher, J. and H. Wanner. 2007.
A European pattern climatology 1766-2000. 
Climate Dynamics, DOI: 10.1007/s00382-007-0257-6.

Casty, C., Handorf, D. and M. Sempf. 2005.
Combined climate winter regimes over the North Atlantic/European sector 1766-2000.
Geophysical Research Letters, 32, DOI: 10.1029/2005GL022431.

Mitchell, T.D. and P.D. Jones. 2005. 
An improved method of constructing a database of monthly climate observations 
and associated high-resolution grids. 
International Journal of Climatology, 25, 693-712. 

Kalnay, E. et al. 1996.
The NCEP/NCAR 40-year reanalysis project. 
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 77, 437–471.

Kistler, R. et al. 2001.
The NCEP-NCAR 50-year reanalysis: monthly means CD-ROM and documentation. 
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 82, 247–267.


ABSTRACT:
Using monthly independently reconstructed
gridded European fields for the 500 hPa geopotential
height, temperature, and precipitation covering the last
235 years we investigate the temporal and spatial evolution
of these key climate variables and assess the leading
combined patterns of climate variability. Seasonal European
temperatures show a positive trend mainly over the
last 40 years with absolute highest values since 1766.
Precipitation indicates no clear trend. Spatial correlation
technique reveals that winter, spring, and autumn covariability
between European temperature and precipitation is
mainly influenced by advective processes, whereas during
summer convection plays the dominant role. Empirical
Orthogonal Function analysis is applied to the combined
fields of pressure, temperature, and precipitation. The
dominant patterns of climate variability for winter, spring,
and autumn resemble the North Atlantic Oscillation and
show a distinct positive trend during the past 40 years for
winter and spring. A positive trend is also detected for
summer pattern 2, which reflects an increased influence of
the Azores High towards central Europe and the Mediterranean
coinciding with warm and dry conditions. The
question to which extent these recent trends in European
climate patterns can be explained by internal variability or
are a result of radiative forcing is answered using cross
wavelets on an annual basis. Natural radiative forcing
(solar and volcanic) has no imprint on annual European
climate patterns. Connections to CO2 forcing are only
detected at the margins of the wavelets where edge effects
are apparent and hence one has to be cautious in a further
interpretation.


GEOGRAPHIC REGION: North Atlantic/Europe (80-30°N and 50°W-40°E)
PERIOD OF RECORD:  December 1765 - November 2000


LIST OF FILES: readme-casty.txt (this file),
temp-mon.txt (Monthly North Atlantic/European temperature reconstruction 1766-2000),
precip-mon.txt (Monthly North Atlantic/European precipitation reconstruction 1766-2000),
500-mon.txt (Monthly North Atlantic/European 500 hPa gepotential height reconstruction 1766-2000),
(space-delimited ASCII format).


DESCRIPTION:
The area is from 80-30°N and 50°W-40°E on a 0.5° (2.5°) grid for temperature and precipitation (500 hPa geopotential height). 
The start point for temperature and precipitation is at the very north-west at 80°N and 50°W (i.e. the grid point is centered at 79.75°N and 49.75°W and covers +/- 0.25° around that center, see column names in data files). The second point is at 80°N and 49.5°W, and so forth. The end grid point is at the very south-east, i.e. 30°N and 40°E.
The start point for 500 hPa geopotential height is 80°N and 50°W, the second at 80°N and 47.5°W, and so forth (again, north-west to south-east).
Please see column names in the corresponding files, which indicate the corresponding coordinates of the grid centers. 
Missing values in temperature and precipitation are marked as "NA" and correspond to sea/land mask as reconstructions are over land.
The data 1900 onwards in the temperature and precipitation reconstruction is the CRU TS2 reanalyis (Mitchell and Jones 2005).
The data 1948 onwards in the 500 hPa geopotential height reconstruction NCEP reanalysis (Kalnay et al. 1999, Kistler et al. 2001).
See corresponding file headers for additional information.