Euro-Climhist – a Long History

The historical climate database Euro-Climhist has been growing continually for a timespan of more than 40 years. The first period of documentation, going back to the 1970s, was based on punched cards. The database gained a first significant impulse for an international scope on entire Europe in the early 1990s, based on a project and several conferences financed by the European Science Foundation. Due to a lack of funding the project could go on only very slowly between 1995 and 2009. Finally, an enlargement of Euro-Climhist and a professionalization of the technical staff became possible since 2010 through the support of the Swiss Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) Office at the Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology Meteo Swiss. In this way, an improved scientific information system is now accessible to the public via Internet.