Statistical analysis and interpretation of historical time series of climatic indicators

International audienceThis paper reviews the different types of information available for reconstructing climatic changes of the last millennium and succinctly presents a statistical method able to summarise the various indicators available and to provide homogeneous series of temperature and precipitation. The method is applied to data from western Europe and we show that, if the temperature changes of the last decade emerges above the variability of the last millennium, they are less exceptional than inferred from the Mann's curve at the northern hemisphere scale