Steve Goddard reminded me that we’ve had “220 Years of Global Warming in Philadelphia”
Starting in 1790, a prominent Philadelphia resident named Charles Pierce started keeping detailed records of the weather and climate, which has been archived on Google Books.
His report from January, 1790 is below:
JANUARY. 1790. The average or medium temperature of this month was 44 degrees. This is the mildest month of January on record. Fogs prevailed very much in the morning, but a hot sun soon dispersed them, and the mercury often ran up to 70 in the shade, at mid-day. Boys were often seen swimming in the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. There were frequent showers as in April, some of which were accompanied by thunder and lightning. The uncommon mildness of the weather continued until the 7th of February.
Compare vs. January, 2010 which had a mean temperature of 32 degrees – 12 degrees cooler than 220 years ago. So far, February is even colder.
Here’s what GISS says about the temperature. Note Philly is now about where it was in 1950.
The water temperature in the Delaware River was close to freezing and was frozen over for part of January, 2010 – so it is unlikely that many boys were swimming there this year.
Yes, this is just one month, so here is a more detailed analysis from WUWT.
Hide the decline.
Every time we see abuse of the word “record” it should have a qualifier. They should qualify it as to which reports it comes from. Record floods from 80 years ago are ignored.
I love it. My estimation of where we were at about equal to 1953. 1950 is close!
I do wish, however, that the graph went back to the 1920s so as to see the 1930s temperatures. Starting in 1948, biases the viewing of the overall trend.
You wouldn’t catch me and my Southern Calif. hide swimming in a river in 70F sun… what are you people thinking? Waay too cold for swimming.
I am not sure I understand the graph – it displays annual temperature. What does Charles say for the entire year?
Aaaah dont you love it – whenever NASA are compared to reality their results are hotly debated
His publisher has extracted a table of the monthly averages in another of its publications (“The American Quarterly Register,” May, 1848, page 156-157).
http://books.google.com/books?id=JEbZAAAAMAAJ&dq=temperature%20philadelphia%20%20pierce&lr=&as_brr=4&pg=PA156#v=onepage&q=false
OK S.
btw, Your google link doesn’t seem to work. Maybe this one won’t either:
http://books.google.com/books?id=uJA-AAAAYAAJ&dq=temperature%20philadelphia%20charles%20pierce&lr=&as_brr=4&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q=&f=false
(See page 264 for yearly averages)
That dip approx, 1960 means I could have ice skated on Cobbs Creek.
Oh.
I did!
Jeremy,
I’m not sure I have ever had a day at the beach in Northern California when the air temperature was over 70 degrees.
Want to comment on this, but there are not too many things I’m less interested in than Philadelphia.
Please be honest with your loyal readers:
Mr. Pierce didn’t explain how he did the monthly mean (perhaps day temperatures?)
It’s really funny to see AGW alarmists carrying on like idiots trying to convince the world to stop climate change simply because they are afraid of a fraction of a degree rise in global mean temperature over the past 100 or so years. What do they want? A flat line? AGW alarmists must be the dumbest, most stupid people on this planet. To think some of these are scientists is a grave concern to me as the real problems of the world are continuing unnoticed.
Woah. 1816. Ice in every month!
Charles Pierce was clearly in the pay of big oil.
It’s hard to tell what the point of this article is. Everyone knows that the climate (both local and global) has natural variability, but that doesn’t mean human factors can’t also have a substantial effect – in fact, it should make us more concerned about anthropogenic climate change, not less so, if it is telling us that climate is quite sensitive to relatively small forcings. IIRC the forcing from anthropogenic CO2 is around 1.6 W/m2 compared to a fluctuation of around 0.2 W/m2 due to the normal solar cycle. This seems significant.
SMHI, the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, has a temperature series for Uppsala (to the North of Stockholm) — daily means from 1722 to 2004. You can load it down as a zipped text file. (There are two temperature columns, the one to the right has adjusted figures to compensate for local changes of place etc.)
http://www.smhi.se/klimatdata/meteorologi/temperatur/uppsalas-temperaturserie-1.2855
I took the July figures and calculated yearly and decadal means, and found that the 1760’s were the warmest decade (18.1ºC). The 1960’s were the coldest (15.4ºC), and the 1970’s the fifth coldest. This means the summers now are more or less like they have always been. The change that I can notice myself is that from 1989 and until 2007, winters have been unusually mild.
But now we are back again to real Nordic winters with cold and snow, lots of snow, roofs collapsing etc…
Some enterprising PhD student really should get stuck into the British Admiralty records. Every ship in the fleet – and in the East India Company – kept a record several times daily of weather. (The Dutch Admiralty and those of other nations may hold comparable records). This incomparable resource really should be mined for the historic data it contains
There is also quite hot decade 1790-1799 in the temperature record from Prague Klementinum
http://xmarinx.sweb.cz//KLEMENTINUM.xls
The mean of last decade 2000-2009 was however 0,96°C above the decade 1790-1799. But if we subtract the UHI – which using the comparison with another stations around Prague is >0,5°C for Klementinum. So then we come in Prague to warming in comparison with the decade 1790-1799 <0,5°C.
Just BTW a little but maybe breaking OT- Czech Meteorological institute climatologists obtained and published data from CRU together with their own data for the same stations in the Czech republic
http://portalh.chmi.cz/http:/portal.chmi.cz/files/portal/docs/meteo/ok/files/CRU_CHMI_monthly_temperatures.xls
and comparing the CRU data with their own data the Czech climatologists claimed in their articles, that the CRU didn't manipulate the Czech data -even there are large differences between the Czech and CRU data.
However, when I looked into the data I found out, that there are whole years even decades of numbers in the CRU data which even the Czech Meteorological institute doesn't have – for their own stations! – and in one case is confirmed that there the CRU has even data for one of the station (Cheb) in year 1953 – when the station didn't existed at all – because it was founded late in 1954.
The climatologists from the Czech meteorological institute now absolutely aren't able to answer, where the significant chunks of data from the CRU for the Czech stations (which as usual are mostly airports) come from, and it almost looks like the CRU completely fabricated whole years in the records. Looks like we aren't just on track to prove manipulation, but an outright fraud, and it is maybe the reason why Phil Jones wrote he would rather delete the data, then let them be obtained by FOI and then telling the world the infamous CRU lost the data during moving.
“Mr. Pierce didn’t explain how he did the monthly mean ”
The Google book said he took 3 temperatures each day – sunrise, 2pm and 10pm.
I wonder how close the temps match CET?
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cetml1659on.dat
Lubos has a great blog article on how the last 30 years are not terribly remarkable using CET.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/01/warming-trends-in-england-from-1659.html#more
@ur momisugly Juan (13:22:20)
“Please be honest with your loyal readers: Mr. Pierce didn’t explain how he did the monthly mean (perhaps day temperatures?)”
In the referenced text he explains that he took a reading three times a day, just before dawn, at 2pm, and at 10pm. That gave him the low, the high, and, potentially, any rapid afternoon/evening change in the weather.
You guys are doing it wrong!!! See, if you apply a stat trick, then your graph can smooth out!!!
OT:
The Guardian reports again on the FOI issues
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/03/climate-scientists-freedom-information-act#start-of-comments
The comments are starting to show an interesting mix of pro and sceptic views.
I might have to plot the trend…
Steve: You are looking at the raw data, not the adjusted data.
And it was not peer-reviewed, either.
John Galt,
Good point. Those boys thought it was warm enough to swim, but clearly did not have the correct academic credentials to make that determination. They were probably paid off by the oil companies.