The magazine of the european research area European Commission Copenhagen, a missed chance?

A thousand years of climate 

in Europe

T

he aim of the Millennium European Climate project, 

launched under the Sixth Framework Programme, is to 

determine whether present climate changes exceed 

the natural variability of the European climate as observed 

over the past millennium. Researchers from the 40 univer-

sities and research institutes working on the project have 

pooled their knowledge in various fields to try and recon-

stitute the European climates of the past. “It is a multidisci-

plinary project that uses different approaches such as the analysis of historical archives, tree rings, 

lake sediments, ice cores and models,” explains Rob Wilson, a palaeoclimatologist at St Andrews 

University in Scotland (UK). “Each approach shows its strengths and its weaknesses, and we are 

using the strengths of each type of data to establish a history of Europe’s climate over the past 

thousand years,” he continues.  

Once the data have been collected and analysed they are compared with the results of models. 

“If these two independent sources of information concur, that not only permits a better under-

standing of past climate changes but also allows us to identify the factors that dominate these changes 

for the different periods,” explains the researcher. As the Millennium European Climate project runs 

until June 2010 the final results are not yet available although preliminary analyses made at European 

level to date “are globally in line with the IPCC’s conclusions,” explains Rob Wilson.