A Climate Database for Switzerland and Europe

Since the 1980s, Euro-Climhist has set itself the task of collecting historical climate data left behind by humans, scrutinising the sources and then making it available free of charge to both scientists and the wider public with the aid of an independently developed system. Initially, the core was primarily data on Switzerland, but in recent years more and more data on Europe as a whole and on individual European regions has been added, currently ranging from the High Middle Ages to the present day.

While the data for Switzerland and partly also for Europe (for the period before 1500) are processed and published by the core team in Bern, this is done for other regions of Europe and for pan-European reconstructions through collaborations with other research groups. These publish their data using the Euro-Climhist methodology under their own direction and responsibility, with the Euro-Climhist managers providing the necessary assistance in recording and processing the data. This is intended to achieve the standardisation necessary for supra-regional research and at the same time ensure that experts for the individual regions can publish their research results under their own name without having to go through the many years of development work for a web-based database again. Each data entry will also include the name of the person working on it and can therefore be correctly cited by experts.