Philadelphia's Climate in the Early Days

Now that is very interesting. Keeps getting back to Sunspots, because there definitely wasn’t significant amounts of anthropogenic CO2 being produced by industry back then….
Probably won’t find this in the mainstream media, well not until they decide to create an Ice Age bandwagon and make a catastrophe out of natural variation and jumble science with fantasy again.
…. Anyway, it’s kind of reassuring to know that we’ve been there before.

Thank you for this wonderful post.
IMHO, there is one factor that makes a direct comparison between the Pierce records and today impossible; the urban heat island effect. In other words, the UHI is surely making today’s data for the city warmer than it otherwise would have been. If I’m right on that, the real temperature difference is therefor larger than you have shown, and the cooling even more significant.
Is it just me, or does Solar Cycle 4’s decline look very similar to 24’s? the shape of the slope looks very similar to me.

Well it wasn’t the sun. That giant flaming ball that is so big that our entire planet could fall into it and not even make a respectable splash couldn’t possibly affect things here.
Since the cooling was harmful and caused crop failures and other problems, it has to have been anthropogenic. My guess is soot from burning coal.
(and for the humor impaired, yes, this was intended as sarcasm)

Dear Anthony
Just about OT but more an excuse to indicate another impressed learner lurking.
Do Tambora in 1815 and the year without a summer in 1816 show in those records.
In Ulster/Ireland there was a famine in 1817 – I suppose following a reduction in temperatures in 1816
I have seen some contemporary weather notes made by a relative and 1816 isn’t mentioned as unusual which has always puzzled me

That was very intersting. I wonder how many such old diaries exist worldwide.
Such spells of unusual warm, or cold, weather can be found anywhere. Unusual weather is in fact not unusual.
If the observations mentioned above occurred today, or especially when Gore testifies this week, think of the doomsday panic he and the media would try to unleash.
But when Gore testifies later this week, looks like more cold weather.
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp1.html
If we are lucky, the heating system will bonk out just before Gore testifies.

This morning several Maine stations are again establishing new record daily lows. It’s becoming commonplace this month.

Sorry O/T but an excellent round up of research into the UHI in North America can be found on “CO2 Science”.
http://www.co2science.org/subject/u/summaries/uhinorthamerica.php

David M. Ludlum wrote a series of American weather books, one of which is titled, “Early American Winters: 1604-1820.” In it he tells the tale of the winter of 1779-80, when the snow started falling in November and just didn’t stop. This is the winter after Washington’s storied Valley Forge freezeout. Washington’s troops were wintering in Morristown, N.J. — one writer said it made Valley Forge of the previous year look like a picnic.
All of the New York harbor from New Jersey to the lower section of Long Island Sound was frozen to the point of cavalry and multiple cannons being hauled between Manhattan and Staten Island, and several Hessian troops abandoned their posts and walked the 12 miles across Long Island Sound from Lloyd’s Neck to Stamford, CT. Ludlum says that the Connecticut Courant in Hartford provided the most complete temperature record. The temperatures reportedly reached 16 below zero. Even if that temperature isn’t completely accurate to the degree, it was obviously as cold as the severe cold the New York area suffered through in the winter of 1933-34.
I wonder how 1779-80 and 1933-34 fall as to solar minima and maxima. After all, they’re just local weather events.

Pierre raises an interesting point. Can anyone suggest where would be the best place to look for old records which can be compared to this period? It does seem to keep coming back to sunspots. No idea why. how, etc. and correlation is not necessarily causation, but the current period is freezing my butt, and putting paid to the AR4 projections. -24C this morning. Not pleasant.

A very interesting article, which shows us that before the 20th century there was not some sort of climatic Golden Age, with predictable mild springs, warm summers and snowy winters every year (and which, according to AGW theory, was thrown out of kilter by industrialisation and CO2.) The amount of variability appears to have been huge, in the 18th and in any century. In 1776, Washington’s army was crossing the Delaware, which was swarming with ice floes; in 1777-78 they were freezing in Valley Forge. The mild January of 1790 would probably have got people sounding the alarm about CO2-induced “climate chaos”, had the same pattern occurred 200 years later.

Ralph B.
As I understand it, the objection to the sunspot-temperature correlation being meaningful (in the scientific sense) is that we don’t have a mechanism to explain it. Obviously the correlation is there, but is there some third factor we haven’t found yet that explains both? Or do two long-term cycles happen to be coinciding for the last couple of hundred years that make it only look like there is a connection? Until a mechanism is proposed and confirmed, we won’t really know.
To find a mechanism by which solar cycles influence climate, someone would need to come up with an hypothesis that demonstrates how solar variability might cause (for example) water molecules to behave slightly differently to produce an overall warmer or cooler effect, or perhaps more or less wator vapor in the atmosphere, which over time influences the climate. Something like that.
Some kind of mechanism is needed, a testable hypothesis, before we can really call it science. The correlations tell us that something is going on (maybe), but until we have a mechanism, we’ll never be quite sure what, and we’ll never really be able to make accurate predictions.

It’d be interesting to see if there is any correlation between tree-rings and temperatures in the vicinity covered by this and other diarists.

Nice article!
I’m in my “colonial” period of American History reading and have been struck by the meticulous attention to weather and note-keeping of both Washington and Jefferson. Also, it was no secret that Philadelphia was a horrendous place to be in summers during the colonial period, as anyone who’s read David McCullough’s John Adams would know. Al Gore would have had a field day holding hearings in the stifling heat.
I’ve recently finished George Washington’s War by Bruce Chadwick, which contains many accounts of how weather influenced the course of the Revolutionary War. What strikes me about this history is that, despite the fact that we generally consider the 18th century as the tail-end of the Little Ice Age, the real take home message is…wait for it…weather is a story of extremes. And even in a period that virtually everyone acknowledges as a cold period for the northern hemisphere, the stories are almost as much about unusual warmth as about extreme cold.
Most Americans know that Washington led a crossing of the Delaware River on early Christmas morning 1776 amidst ice floes, but most don’t know the equally impressive feat of escaping to Morristown in the slogging muck that followed as a result of a warm spell the week after. From years of note-taking while running his Mt. Vernon estate, Washington recognized a narrow window for escape on frost-hardened ground, which quikly warmed and caught the British in a quagmire.
Most Americans know about the bleak winter at Valley Forge, but that winter was described by Chadwick in this way:

Although there were sevearl days of bone-chilling weather, the temperatures recorded during those months was not unusually low, and many soldiers used phrases like “pleasant for the season” to note the mildness. Sgt. Ebenezer Wild kept a diary that showed mild temperatures (“very fare and pleasant”) on eleven of the first fourteen days of January. The Valley Forge winter, despite the folklore that surrounded it, was actually quite moderate.

Chadwick references a meterologist/historian, the late David Ludlum, whom perhaps Anthony is aware of. The actual reference in the book is from a 1975 edition of Weatherwise, but similar works appeared more recently. It appears that the online archives for this magazine only go back to the 90s.
Here’s Ludlum’s obituary and a couple of articles in the archives of the magazine.
NYT obit
Weatherwise citations

Peter (04:23;06) asks:
“where would be the best place to look for old records which can be compared to this period?”
I spent a couple of satisfying afternoons at the local library going through microfiche records of our local paper. Armed with only a few dates in mind, I poured through 1930’s edition reading about the “great” heatwaves and record high temperatures and the drownings and deaths before the era of air-conditioning. Just those two episodes convinced me that the doctoring of our climatic record is a criminal act.

Peter,
I know that old monastaries in Europe kept such records going way back. But that would be rather local. I wonder if any historical archives in other areas like New England, China, Arabia etc. would have such records. I would think they surely do. Something for scholars to research.
C.H. Beck has written book called:
Kulturgeschichte des Klimas
(Cutural History of the Climate).
Unfortunately written only in German. In this book he cites many historical written records from various European archives. Of course, the written records contradict what Mann’s hokey stick claims.

One of the problems with correlating sunspot activity with global temperature has been the complication of volcanic eruptions, which are known to cause short-term cooling through cloud-seeding effects. There is a study out there (can’t lay my hands on it at the moment) which purports to have tuned out the volcanic effect and have produced a very good correlation between sunspot activity and global temperature.

Very interesting piece of information! However, I doubt that the changing temperature of a single city requires much in the way of a climatological explanation that would be broad enough to effect world-wide temperatures.

Yep this is very interesting data. I wonder if there are folks at Giss that have noticed this record and just how they would homogenize it. If I understand homogenization it means to blend and cook a liquid to prevent any changes or corruption of the mix of components. Therefore there will be no resemblance to the natural variation that would have appeared with out the homogenization. Not so sure homohenization is the way to study temperature.
Mean while here in N E Alabama of the 26 days of January thus far we have had 13 pipe bursting low temps well below seasonal lows and only 13 days with highs at or above seasonal highs. For those of us here in this area/region this has not been the warmest Jan. on record by a long shot.
Just thinking about things.
Bill Derryberry

Climate, Carbon, Solar Cycles, Man Made Global Warming
Recycling Climate Change for Profit
By Dr. Tim Ball Monday, January 26, 2009
It is generally agreed that changes in the sun/earth relationship are the major mechanism driving long-term climate patterns. These are collectively known as the Milankovitch Effect and include; changes in the Earth’s orbit caused primarily by the gravitational pull of Jupiter with a 100,000-year cycle; changes in the tilt of the Earth of undetermined cause, with a 40,000- year cycle; and a shift in the date of equinox with a 19,000-year cycle. Although Milankovitch’s work was initially accepted it lost favor when his results conflicted with some radiocarbon data. I recall conferences in the 1980s when reference to Milankovitch brought vigorous protest. However, by the 1990s he was back in favor.
IPCC 2001 “The Scientific Basis” says “In climate research and modeling we should recognize we are dealing with a a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
It’s statistically easy to detect cycles within this graph. Some of them seem visible. The challenge is to identify the cause of these cycles, as they are the net result of a myriad of cycles, including the Milankovitch Effect and sunspots cycles. One thing we know is they don’t fit the CO2 pattern.
So just one apparently simple media article illustrates Schweitzer’s point. They also confirm Rutherford Rogers claim that, “We’re drowning in information and starving for knowledge.” The lack of knowledge does not prevent governments forging ahead based on the completely unwarranted certainty of the IPCC and proponents of AGW.

One of the longest temperature records is the trading posts along Hudson Bay – Churchill and York Factory. The Hudson Bay Company and the Royal Society of England didn’t believe the temperature reports from the traders and they were still thinking about the NorthWest Passage so they established a project to measure temperatures at these forts – some of the records have gone missing but here is a temp record from the arctic going back to 1769.
http://www.john-daly.com/p-bears/hudson%201769-2002.gif

I can see that before my post was accepted, other posts just before began mentioning oceanic oscillations. Good. But it still surprises me that it took this long. This may be my own lonely soap box, but unless a plot of ground changes latitude, altitude and/or proximity to a large body of water, the climate will be stable within 10’s of 1000’s of years. It is the weather pattern that changes. Local geology, plate tectonics, and large scale global tilt can and do plunge regional stable climates into new climate zones. But it is my opinion that what we are talking about at this science blog, and what the AGW’s are talking about, are weather patterns. And by and large, the largest driver of weather patterns are the jet stream, and oceanic oscillations. Any other heating or cooling source is drowned by these two drivers. It remains for us to understand these drivers first, and then to talk about and study what might drive the drivers.

The warmth of the latest 18th Century was also shown in Rhodes Fairbridge’s reconstruction of Late Holocene sea levels published in Science in the late 1970s.
The winter of Washington’s stay at Valley Forge (1777-78) was considered the coldest anyone could remember. It too seems to fit well with the sunspot minima of that decade as does the warmth of the 1790s.
Also to Pierre Gosselin (05:55:11): “hokey stick” works fine for me.

A key point here is that January in Philadelphia during the “warmest decade in history” has been no warmer than January during the Dalton minimum – a known cold period.

Evert Jesse:
Use Google to search on:
‘el nino tectonic modulation in the pacific basin’

By the way, regarding jet stream and prevailing wind direction, click on the 30-day animation of Arctic Ice and watch the flow of ice concentration http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/. Then click on the jet stream Arctic loop http://squall.sfsu.edu/crws/jetstream.html. They don’t exactly coincide because the pictures are taken on different days and have longer in-between data blanks, but you will learn a LOT about sea ice behavior and wind direction. Too bad some enterprising web designer hasn’t made this a possibility. You could super-impose an animation of Arctic ocean currents (temp and speed), wind direction and speed from the jet stream to the inner patterns, air temperature, and sea ice behavior. Goes a long way in explaining Arctic sea ice behavior.
Which leads back to my point about weather patterns near Philly. A looped animation of weather fronts, jet stream behavior, oceanic currents (temp, etc) and land temperature would also go a long way in explaining weather patterns.

Mike McMillan (01:43:01) :
Mike, the one thing I noticed at the climatetrek link you provided was the typical spin. A notation that scientists were not saying due to global warming but consistent with it, El Nino a past factor but not a major one, etc. But… not one word about urbanization, land-use, etc.
I have to agree with your implied sentiment: A disingenuous characterization.

Pamela,
Good point about the ocean oscillations. You might note that the PDO shift in 1977 looked more like a step function than a linear trend as we see in the graph above.
http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ClimTrends/Change/graphics/temp_dep_49-07_F_sm.jpg

One of the reasons there continues to be so much global warming still going around.
I’m not much of a statistician but couldn’t pass up a chance to provide requested feedback to NOAA concerning their Local Three Month Temperature Outlook. The product is relatively new (couple-several years) but seldom forecasts below normal temperatures. The reason becomes apparent when you look at the figures they use. My reply:
I was curious as to why there were few instances of forecast “below normal” temperatures with the product so I conducted a little exercise of my own using the summer (JJA) data for Bangor, Maine. Seems these products appear to be no more than an exercise in statistical manipulation. Rather than use the raw 1971-2000 average temperature, you’ve adopted the revised NOW data which drops the average 0.6F. As if that were not enough, you chose to use the “median” instead of the average. This drops the temperature another 0.6F for a total change of -1.2F for the season. This is precisely the value of a standard deviation for the ME-02 climate region. Using the raw average figures for the past 8 years I find that there is only one instance of the average exceeding a standard deviation, which would be 2004 with an average of -1.9F. Using your revised median figures for the eight years the results would be dramatically different: the median would be exceeded four times (50%) and fall within the standard deviation four times. Seems to me that all you have to forecast is “average to above” to see 100% verification. Like I said – an exercise in statistical manipulation!

Meat to be removed from hospital menus in NHS plan to cut carbon emissions.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1127527/Meat-removed-hospital-menus-NHS-plan-cut-carbon-emissions.html
What next.

In addition to historical documents such as old diaries and farmers’ records, there are naval logbooks, as mentioned here. Apparently some of these logs indicate a period of rapid warming in Europe during the 1730s; it would be interesting to see how this might tie in with the PDO/AMO at that time.

Some more anecdotal weather from the AP:
Subzero temperatures spread across Maine
By The Associated Press
CARIBOU, Maine — Subzero temperatures were felt across Maine on Monday as another round of arctic air spread into the region.
According to the National Weather Service, the state’s coldest spot was Big Black River, an uninhabited spot in northwest Aroostook County that had a minus 46 reading at 6 a.m.
The weather service said Masardis came in at 44 below zero, Van Buren at minus 41, Presque Isle at minus 40 and Houlton at minus 36.
Bangor reached 25 below zero, Sanford hit minus 15 and Portland came in at minus 2.
Bangor set a record on Sunday with a minus-19 reading, breaking the old record for the date of minus 14 set in 1948.
The AP along with journalists in general, love to use the word “arctic” when it’s really Continental Polar.

Just a reminder of what is going on in 2009 presently.
You see, when the Bush administration does it, it is called “denial” and “delay” and acting for political interests (who knew Detroit automakers’ labor unions voted Republican?). But when the Obama administration does it, it is being “guided by science and “acting on the facts” as well as to make us “independent of foreign oil” and so forth.
Because of course when you don’t drink the kool-aid of climate change, whatever you do to oppose the Vast Green-Alliance Conspiracy’s agenda is swiftly labled in the above terms as Bush was.
Here is latest on car tailpipe emissions:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28846202

“AN APPROXIMATE SEVEN-YEAR PERIOD IN TERRESTRIAL WEATHER, WITH SOLAR CORRELATION” (” … The author presents data and curves for the United States showing the persistence of a period in weather averaging 7 years from 1×90 to 1919. …”)
Off topic: Effect of Beliefs About Weather Conditions on Tipping”
1975 study about cooling: “Weather Variability, Climatic Change, and Grain Production”

From the Haddingtonshire Courier, 4th January 1901 :
“Those who watched for the first glimmer of the new century enjoyed a dawn that might almost have belonged to a backward May, so open and fresh and clear was it. New Year’s day was quite ideal for holidaying, albeit the roads were rather heavy. The country looked wonderfully green and ‘growing’ considering the season. Altogether, the first day of the new century was, as we have said, a good augury – and if auguries do no good at least they do no harm.”
Other reports mention the mild, almost unseasonal weather for that time.

Pam,
I understand your point, but I fail to see how Philidelphia could act as a proxy for any one oscillation. El Nino events could give Philly a wet snowy winter; put then again so could a positive NAO. I completely agree with you in pointing out the obvious -any given point’s weather is determined by large scale synoptic patterns, which are in turn driven by changes in oceanic variability.

Richard Willson, a Columbia University ,
The Sun May Be Factor in Global Warmup,
Greenhouse warming, in which gases created by human activity trap more solar heat in the atmosphere, is expected to increase temperatures on Earth by about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 50 to 100 years. By contrast, according to Willson, solar forcing—the sun’s effect on long-term climate—might account for between 0.7 and 1.4 degrees of warming over the next 100 years, if sustained at the pace his observations suggest. The globe has already warmed by about one degree since 1880, scientists say.
A separate recent study of Sun-induced magnetic activity near Earth, going back to 1868, provides compelling evidence that the Sun’s current increase in output goes back more than a century, Willson said.
This being the case would not this account for all the warming from 1860.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sun_output_030320.html
http://www.earth.columbia.edu/news/2003/story03-20-03.html
http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/Calen/SolarWind.html

The full data referenced by Steve Goddard’s interesting article can be found in this excellent book -obituary of Charles Pierce
http://books.google.com/books?id=yXkWAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=temperature+philadelphia+1790&source=web&ots=kDcJ9xhG8H&sig=ocb5JfGI5A8j5ApWfBacyRyY2pY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result
As well as Philadelphia information it also contains many references to world climate.
It was generally accepted that the world was warming and the winters becoming less cold as this quotation shows;
“The temperature of the winter season, in northern latitudes, has suffered a material change, and become warmer in modern, than it was in ancient times. … Indeed I know not whether any person, in this age, has ever questioned the fact.” —Noah Webster, 1758-1843 (founder- Websters dictionary)
There are thousands of records showing we have been this way before. In the UK we are fortunate to have extremely detailed research of our Bronze age remains and weather references from Tacitus the Roman general, The Venerable Bede, The Anglo Saxon Chronicles, The Domesday Book, Geoffrey Chaucer and Pepys, as well as records kept by the great estate of the landed gentry, when we tie back into the Instrument records from 1660. That is some 5000 years of what seems to be considered ‘anecdotal’ data which of course can’t be considered as reliable as interpoltated data created by computer models
Incidentally, the UKs warmest winters to this day remain 1733, 1868, 1833.
TonyB

A Reconstructed 1784-2007 Time Series of Greenland Melt Extent
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2009/01/23/glacier-slowdown-in-greenland-how-inconvenient/

Obama won and he says there is a Global Climate Crisis. So, that’s the end of that. Expect changes asap.

@Ralph B.
Henrik Svensmark is a dutch climate physicist whose theories are also addressed on this site. He has found that cosmic rays seed low elevation cloud formation. i.e. http://www.space.dtu.dk/English/Research/Research_divisions/Sun_Climate/Experiments_SC/SKY.aspx
When the sun’s magnetic field is high (correlating to more sunspots), fewer cosmic rays reach the earth, fewer clouds are formed and temperatures rise. during minima, reduced magnetic field (resulting in fewer sunspots), more rays reach the earth, more clouds are formed, and cooler temperatures prevail.
The variation in quantity of cosmic rays reaching the earth also explains why rates of carbon-14 vary in objects with known ages.

Pamela:”Other than the Great Lakes snow affect, the weather patterns you all get in the East comes from the frontier. The wild wild west.”
Did we forget about weather systems that ride up the East coast from the South? I do believe the annual Bermuda High sets up that flow every summer.

Record heat is due to high-pressure cells. Climate is due to the overall big picture. Sticking weather stations next to pavement and metal buildings blurs the record.
Check out the 10,000 years of Laurentide Ice Sheet over North America and see how climates changed over time as the weather patterns were alterered or unblocked due to retreating Ice Sheets with thier attentdant dominant Highs & Lows.
We here in No. Ca are suffering from a weather pattern similar to the Younger Dryas period where it can swing from bitter cold to sunny & warm, yet with little precipitation.
Solar Minima can play the devil with things, it does, and the general outcome has historically been colder climates. It does not matter what the mechanism turns out to be, that’s the way it ends up.
Europe was known to suffer from Minima induced famine as their climate altered at the close of the Medieval Maximum, and this effect continued to the extent of the Minima that followed in later times. Thier climate went to cool & wet summers which rotted the crops in the field. Thier winters turned colder and lasted longer.
Other areas of the world likewise got highly disrupted….and colder as a general rule for the Northern Hemisphere.

This from wikipedia:
“Finally in 1724 Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit produced a temperature scale which now (slightly adjusted) bears his name. He could do this because he manufactured thermometers, using mercury (which has a high coefficient of expansion) for the first time and the quality of his production could provide a finer scale and greater reproducibility, leading to its general adoption.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermometer

Steven Hill (12:59:59) :
“Obama won and he says there is a Global Climate Crisis. So, that’s the end of that. Expect changes asap”.
Steven Hill,
I think the “non existing climate crises” should not be treated like an election theme.
We have to undertake any effort to convince Obama that he will make a historic mistake if he starts to poor money into an effort to solve a non existing problem.
If we can not convince him we have to resist all the proposed measures and go to the streets until he gets the picture.
I am very confident that clean science, reason and common sense will prevail over ideology and religion.
Otherwise the Socialist Experiment of the DDR that caused the construction of the Iron Curtain would have continued until today.
As we all know the Socialist Experiment imploded in 1989 causing the collapse of the communist USSR and the end of the Cold War.
I will not believe or accept that the American People could be loured into a similar experiment twenty years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, don’t you agree?

ked5 (13:13:06) :
@Ralph B.
“Henrik Svensmark is a dutch climate physicist”
This is not correct.
Svensmark is from Danmark

Just posted on “Drudge”
GORE HEARING ON WARMING MAY BE PUT ON ICE
Mon Jan 26 2009 17:59:26 ET
Al Gore is scheduled before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday morning to once again testify on the ‘urgent need’ to combat global warming.
But Mother Nature seems ready to freeze the proceedings.
A ‘Winter Storm Watch’ has been posted for the nation’s capitol and there is a potential for significant snow… sleet… or ice accumulations.
“I can’t imagine the Democrats would want to showcase Mr. Gore and his new findings on global warming as a winter storm rages outside,” a Republican lawmaker emailed the DRUDGE REPORT. “And if the ice really piles up, it will not be safe to travel.”
“A spokesman for Sen. John Kerry, who chairs the committee, was not immediately available to comment on contingency plans.
Global warming advocates have suggested this year’s wild winter spells are proof of climate change.”
Developing…

Ron de Haan (14:59:27) :
Are you sure it’s not “Svansmark” from “Denmark?”

I’m an AGW skeptic, but this post is farcical. Even assuming the measurements are accurate and scientific, this is a tiny data point. It isn’t measuring the whole US or even a state. It’s a city. It would only be compelling with coupled with other, more pertinent, pieces of information.

Just for the Record…
Charles Pierce is not now and was not then employeed by Exxon Mobile, he received no grants or contributions from energy lobbyists groups or right-wing political think tanks. He received no advances from the Coal Industry in order to create his journal. Nor was the man mistaken, using faulty equipment, or an out and out fibber.
Standard Disclaimer regarding any factual historical accounts of weather and/or cumulative weather into climate in order to counter what surely will be claims of “fiction” , not accurate journals, amatuer records, and motivations paid for by corporate greed centuries prior to needing the misinformation,by the fabrication of historical records by time travelling agents on the payroll of the SHELLEXXIBURTON BP Corp.
Come on you know that will be the next argument tossed into the ring by the floundering AGW movement as more such records are located.

I found this set of data highly interesting:
http://www.booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/histclimat.htm
Although it is billed as a “Climate History of the British Isles”, it nevertheless includes world events. I’m unsure whether it is of any use in the context of this particular thread, but it certainly makes for fascinating reading!
I particularly like the following observation of the period 4000-3500BC:
“Climatic optimum”: peaked circa 4000 – 3500 BC (some references say 4000 – 2500 BC); markedly reduced glacier extent. (var. refs); tree-lines in northern areas, particularly northern England & Scotland roughly 300m (or 1000ft) higher than they are now, with forests established at higher elevations than now: this implies that wind-damage might not have been a major problem. This in turn translates into weaker, less frequent spells of significantly low pressure (i.e. major cyclogenesis spells). (see also previous date file .. this period started circa 6200 BC). Both globally & regionally, several references mention an anomaly of ~ + 2degC over those values relating to the latter third of the 20th century.
Enjoy!

Terribly sorry, my earlier link seems to go back to this article!
I hope this works:

Nick

Sorry for this post but i got a laugh when I read the bristlecone post above!!! I think Climateaudit.org has a lot to say about that issue and how it too has been adjusted to show current warning as “anthropogenic”.
My apologies Anthony. I should have gone through all the posts prior to posting my last one.

See here
http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/elements/jetstream1.htm
for some really good info on the jet stream. It drives lots of weather patterns and when it shifts, so does the weather pattern. Large loops can fool you into thinking that weather drivers on the East Coast come in from the Northeast and are not a part of the energy coming from the West. The exception is this: As you travel closer to equatorial climates, one gets further away from the NH jet stream influence. Anyway, enjoy the site.

Pamela gray,
Clarification: When I said “comes from the east” i was referring to the Eastern 2/3 of the U.S. as opposed to the Western 1/3. I did not mean that it comes literally out of the “East.”

Sorry ’bout that Novoburgo. I am a linear literal thinker. Which is why I don’t get most jokes other people tell me, and I only tell jokes I get.

We had a twister touch down a couple of days ago causing damage here in No. CA, and another one today. NWS is again invetigating.
Talking about jet stream and changes, the massive swing of the jet stream off the coast of CA is persistent, pausing only to let a few storms into Oregon & Washington.
This is our Climate Change here as we descend back to times not seen in 200-400 yrs.

Ron de Haan (16:20:21)

I do not think it is true.
We know that most trees resist a wide variation in temperatures.
Possible causes could be:
insects, lack of water, lack of minerals, erosion, forrest management etc. etc

They can also suffer from root invasion by larger trees. They may survive while they are young but as they grow they need more nutrient. If that isn’t available they become weak and die. Larger trees can also die if the land slips.

Ron de Haan wrote:

I do not think it is true.
We know that most trees resist a wide variation in temperatures.
Possible causes could be:
insects, lack of water, lack of minerals, erosion, forrest management etc. etc

There’s also the (former) policy of fire prevention causing crowding, increased competition for resources/sunlight, non-renewal of soil (no ash). Fire prevention could also have artificially decreased tree mortality.

Evert Jesse (06:43:51)
the obvious answer is volcanic eruptions: but before they releave pressure
is there a heat build up? geologists don’t care if the planet is .5C warmer first LOL.
but what is bad is that the oceans deep water has huge pressures that buffer any change; that you could have a 20% increase, and not realize it for years.
oh well.

It might be interesting to look at the year 1775 in New England. I have read that one reason the locals were able to revolt against the king was because the spring and summer were kindly, and crops were good. The battles of Concord and Lexington were fought on a “hot” day (for April in New England.) However what caught my attention were notes about getting hay crops in during May, and picking cherries in June. Both usually happen later.
The ice-core records don’t catch these short-term peaks and valleys. And, of course, Mann somehow manages to “smoothes out” the English producing wine in Roman times, and Vikings growing crops in Greenland during the MWP.
However our current hot spells get the press howling about the end of the world, while our cold spells seem to reduce reporters to an embarrassed silence…..for the time being.

Ralph B. (21:30:16) :

I understand the GCR cloud formation theory, but so far it hasn’t been proven. I don’t know if there are records of albedo going back too far, but since 2005 and the “Watts Step” has there been any documented increase in albedo?
Does anyone have a clue as to how much albedo would have to change to have an effect?
Albedo has been measured:
Eos, Vol. 87, No. 4, 24 January 2006 , BY E. PALLÉ, P. R. GOODE, P. MONTAÑÉSRODRIGUEZ,
AND S. E. KOONIN
http://www.iac.es/galeria/epalle/reprints/Palle_etal_EOS_2006.pdf
As you can see in fig 2, the inverted plot agrees with the temperature trends, particularly as there has been somewhere a statement that albedo is constant since 2006.
I used the toy mode at http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/Earth_temp.html
to do the temperature from albedo calculation from fig 2, and the trend is there, the magnitude is exaggerated compared to real data.

Elsewhere I made an observation that winters were becoming less cold on average overall, but summers were not showing any great overall change. I am pleased to see that no less an illustrious team than Jones et al agree with my observations and I am expecting them to share their tens of millions of research funds with me immediately.
“Globally, minimum temperatures appear to be warming at a faster rate than
Maximum temperatures (Karl et al., 1993), particularly since the 1950s (IPCC,
2001), possibly associated with a change in cloud cover. Jones et al. (1999)
found no significant increase in very warm days in the Central England
Temperature series in recent years, but there was a marked decrease in the
frequency of very cold days. A decrease in the diurnal temperature range has
also been found in Northern and Central Europe (Heino et al., 1999)”
in the UK Winter temperatures have constantly fluctuated throughout recorded history and our expectation of very cold snowy winters was popularised by Charles Dickens who drew on his experiences of the little ice age, although ironically, his life time also saw some of the warmest records in the entire CET series. Our top five warmest winters are; 1733 1868 1833 1988 1974
Going further back, the MWP also had some notably warm winters. This scientific study is entitled; “Winter air temperature variations in western Europe during the Early and High Middle Ages (AD 750–1300)” which demonstrates that MWP winters were similar to the 20th century
http://hol.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/8/5/535
We also have many references to the Roman warm period that were previously cited here, which demonstrate the alpine passes were considerably more ice free than the present;
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2007/may16/hannibal-051607.html
and glaciers much higher in altitude. This is the original German version of the study
http://alpen.sac-cas.ch/html_d/archiv/2004/200406/ad_2004_06_12.pdf
a much shorter English language version is here;
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=772
As also previously cited here the 1000 year long records of the Byzantine Empire demonstrate warmth throughout the empire during these known periods and show many other climatic changes. As the climate warmed and became drier we also have their plans of the extensive irrigation systems they built.
There are numerous contemporary records of climate change from the Venerable Bede, The Anglo Saxon Chronicles, through to Pepys. In the US this comes from the extensive weather records of Thomas Jefferson;
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/JEFFERSON/ch07.html
“A change in our climate however is taking place very sensibly. Both heats and colds are become much more moderate within the memory even of the middle-aged. Snows are less frequent and less deep. They do not often lie, below the mountains, more than one, two, or three days, and very rarely a week. They are remembered to have been formerly frequent, deep, and of long continuance. The elderly inform me the earth used to be covered with snow about three months in every year. The rivers, which then seldom failed to freeze over in the course of the winter, scarcely ever do so now. This change has produced an unfortunate fluctuation between heat and cold, in the spring of the year, which is very fatal to fruits. From the year 1741 to 1769, an interval of twenty-eight years, there was no instance of fruit killed by the frost in the neighbourhood of Monticello. An intense cold, produced by constant snows, kept the buds locked up till the sun could obtain, in the spring of the year, so fixed an ascendency as to dissolve those snows, and protect the buds, during their development, from every danger of returning cold. The accumulated snows of the winter remaining to be dissolved all together in the spring, produced those over flowings of our rivers, so frequent then, and so rare now. “
The following, condensed from the records of the Hudson Bay company, demonstrate that climate change is not a new phenomena.
“Over the fifteen years between 1720 and 1735, the first snowfall of the year moved from the first week of September to the last. Also, the late 1700s were turbulent years. They were extremely cold but annual snow cover would vary from ‘extreme depth to no cover’. For instance, November 10th 1767 only one snowfall that quickly thawed had been recorded. June 6, 1791 many feet of snow in the post’s gardens. The entry for July 14, 1798 reads ‘…53 degrees colder today than it was yesterday.”
As well as actual instrumental records we have available to us thousands of such records as the ones above, with first hand accounts that show the lives of real people. In my own town the fortunes of those involved in fishing were made and lost over hundreds of years as climate altered and warm water Pilchards were replaced by cold water Herring and vice versa. The warmth in the latter part of the 18th century caused social dislocation as the Cod moved north to cooler waters and men stayed away longer to reach Newfoundland. The reliability of fish as a temperature proxy is well known;
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=PaEPcGJOxOQC&pg=PA39&lpg=PA39&dq=pilchards+climate+change+devon&source=web&ots=S8Dq9v3O4f&sig=l4VMl6UBROkm4qAtPGWkGS2or5E&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA39,M1
The Bronze Age inhabitants of nearby Dartmoor farmed the tops of the modest peaks and retreated as temperatures cooled-their dwellings are still there and have been subject to numerous studies over 150 years. The MWP inhabitants also farmed the tops in the MWP- we know the crops they grew and their slow descent down into the valley as climate cooled is recorded.
Instead of respecting this vast volume of material demonstrating that climate constantly changes and historically this current episode is nothing out of the ordinary, some people choose to rely on highly theoretical computer models which even their originators admit are highly flawed and unreliable.
Why can’t we take them at their word and accept this is a very new science built on many unproven foundations?
TonyB