Guest Post by Steven Goddard
January, 1790 was a remarkable year in the northeastern US for several reasons. It was less than one year into George Washington’s first term, and it was one of the warmest winter months on record. Fortunately for science, a diligent Philadelphia resident named Charles Pierce kept a detailed record of the monthly weather from 1790 through 1847, and his record is archived by Google Books. Below is his monthly report from that book.
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 that to January, 2009 with an average temperature of 27F, 17 degrees cooler than 1790. One month of course is not indicative of the climate, so let us look at the 30 year period from 1790-1819 and compare that to the last 10 “hot” years.
According to several of the most widely quoted climate scientists in the world, winters were much colder 200 years ago than now – yet the boys swimming in the Delaware in January, 1790 apparently were unaware.
Another interesting fact which can be derived from Charles Pierce’s data, is that January temperatures cooled dramatically during the period 1790-1819 – as can be seen in the graph below. The cooling rate was 13F/century. What could have caused this cooling? We are told by some experts that variations in solar activity can only affect the earth’s temperature by a few tenths of a degree. CO2 levels had been rising since the start of the industrial age. The downward trend is fairly linear and does not show any sharp downward spikes, so it is unlikely to be due to volcanic activity. What other “natural variability” could have caused such a dramatic drop in temperature?
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Pamela,
I clicked on the jet stream over the artic site, also while I was there I looked at the anartic jet stream. They look similiar.
Just wondering, is this the “permanent cyclone over the poles” that I have read about elsewhere?
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
Jack Linard (11:53:13) :
This is purely anecdotal evidence, totally unsupported by bristlecone pine measurements or GCMs.
As usual, you denialists are clutching at straws!
Jack,
In the future please do not refer to me as a denialist. Henceforward I am to be referred to as a contrarian.
Thanks for your attention to this matter,
Mike Bryant
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
Ric: ” You can keep your Pineapple Express”
Living here in Portland, OR we have great respect for the P. Express, we usually get some flooding.
Read this from wikipediea
A Pineapple Express battered Southern California from January 7 through January 11, 2005. This storm was the biggest to hit Southern California since the El Niño of 1998.[1] The storm caused mud slides and flooding, with one desert location just north of Morongo Valley receiving about 9 inches of rain, and some locations on south and southwest-facing mountain slopes receiving spectacular totals: San Marcos Pass, in Santa Barbara County, received 24.57 inches (624 mm), and Opid’s Camp in the San Gabriel Mountains of Los Angeles County was deluged with 31.61 inches (803 mm) of rain in the five day period.
The unusually intense rain storms that hit south-central Alaska in August 2006 were termed “Pineapple Express” rains locally.
November 2006 flood, Granite Falls on the Stillaguamish RiverThe Puget Sound region from Olympia, Washington to Vancouver, BC received several inches of rain per day in November 2006 from a series of successive Pineapple Express storms that caused massive flooding in all major regional rivers and mudslides which closed the mountain passes.
These storms included heavy winds which are not usually associated with the phenomenon. Regional dams opened their spillways to 100% as they had reached full capacity due to rain and snowmelt. Officials referred to the storm system as “the worst in a decade” on November 8, 2006.
Portions of Oregon were also affected, including over 14 inches (350 mm) in one day at Lee’s Camp in the Coast Range, while the normally arid and sheltered Interior of British Columbia received heavy coastal-style rains.
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/
Dan Lee (04:51:33) said,
[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. ]
Well it is there and it obviously has nothing to do with CO2,
correlation is not necessarily causation but unlike gores CO2/temp link this sunspot/temp correlation cannot be reversed.
As far as the last three solar cycles are concerned, you don`t need a rising level of solar activity to keep temps rising, just a steady high level of activity.
It`s the sun stupid.
Obama won and he says there is a Global Climate Crisis. So, that’s the end of that. Expect changes asap.
When was the thermometer invented? Wasn’t it in the early 18th century or late 17th? How far back, then, can such temperature records go? I would assume that dealing with old records would entail a host of difficult and arcane issues related to scale conversion and the like, not to mention assessing the reliability of the values given the lack of standard procedures.
Isn’t the rear-view horizon of reliable temperature records something like 1850 at the most??
@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.
What are the natural causes of the record heat in western australia, russia and western USA? I’m debating my alarmist friends. Thanks
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.
jeff (09.00.10)
Thanks for the tip, I got over 1300 hits, and one of the first was already very interesting (www.geostreamconsulting.com/geoInv.html). Seems to prove that there may indeed be variable heat exchange between the mantle and the sea. I’ll dig a bit further.
Evert
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.
Evert Jesse (06:43:51) asked “Is it conceivable that the heat in the core of the earth itself is a driver for climate changes?”
Thanks to the miracle of the internet one can obtain all sorts of information. Using “heat efflux from earth” I found information on actual heat efflux at:
http://esrc.stfx.ca/pdf/grl-1.pdf
The number was around 80 mW/sq m. Very small relative to IR radiation.
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
Is there a link between solar cycles and the depth of our atmosphere (our blanket)?
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?
Off subject I know, but Pierce’s book is a mine of information other than weather. For instance it has a section (pages 292 onwards) on steamboats, which I find interesting. For news junkies there is a good section on the world’s first newspapers, pages 296 onwards. It is worth while browsing through the books comprehensive contents pages.
OK folks, if anyones reading this, that’s all, stop slacking. Now it’s time to get back on watch.
Go to it.
ked5 (13:13:06) :
@Ralph B.
“Henrik Svensmark is a dutch climate physicist”
This is not correct.
Svensmark is from Danmark
lichanos (13:00:10) : asked
“When was the thermometer invented? Wasn’t it in the early 18th century or late 17th? How far back, then, can such temperature records go? I would assume that dealing with old records would entail a host of difficult and arcane issues related to scale conversion and the like, not to mention assessing the reliability of the values given the lack of standard procedures.
Isn’t the rear-view horizon of reliable temperature records something like 1850 at the most??”
That thermometers were primitive and only accurate from 1850 onwards is a popular misconception.
This from Wikipedia.
“The thermometer was invented in the sixteenth century, but it is disputed who the inventor was. The claims of Santorio are supported by Borelli and Malpighi, while the title of Cornelius Drebbel is considered undoubted by Boerhaave. Galileo’s air thermometer, made before 1597, was the foundation of accurate thermometry. Galileo also invented the alcohol thermometer about 1611 or 1612. Spirit thermometers were made for the Accademia del Cimento, and described in the Memoirs of that academy. When the academy was dissolved by order of the Pope, some of these thermometers were packed away in a box, and were not discovered until early in the nineteenth century. Robert Hooke describes the manufacture and graduation of thermometers in his “Micrographia” (1665).”
The next two links refers to the invention of the ‘accurate’ Galileo thermometer in 1597
http://www.thermometershop.co.uk/more_about____.htm#how
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_thermometer
This is the “Micrographia” referred to above:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15491/15491-h/15491-h.htm
The thermometer- or thermoscope- became all the rage in Europe from the 1620’s. The Royal Society created the ‘standard’ thermometer in 1663, described in detail here
http://www.jstor.org/pss/227641
This standard was the basis for all subsequent thermometer technology and followed on from the original written instructions on how to calibrate thermometers made in 1659, and which was formalised as referenced above in 1665. The Hadley CET records derive from 1659 following this new calibration standard, although the Fahrenheit scale did not come about until 1724, as linked here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Gabriel_Fahrenheit
The original measurements from 1659 were fully converted to the Fahrenheit scale by Manley, who also adjusted the readings to take into account the transition from the Julian calendar -introduced by Julius Caesar in 45BC- to the Gregorian calendar. Manley considered the readings to be perfectly accurate to around a quarter to half a degree in the Fahrenheit equivalent. It is thought the Galileo thermometers were accurate to a little more than half of a degree of the Fahreheit equivalent.
As might be expected Pepys got his hands on one of the new thermoscopes. This text was written as a footnote in the 1893 Wheatley transcription of Pepys diary and is the one Wikipedia have used in the first link given above. It refers to 23 March 1663;
http://www.pepys.info/1663/1663mar.html
The instrument referenced above was given to Pepys in 1663 by Greatorex who had been advised by Robert Boyle. This gift is referenced here.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jeOMfpYMOtYC&pg=PA267&lpg=PA267&dq=pepys+thermometer&source=web&ots=aBavR_-kac&sig=GA1EQl04anW85TuIEwrdZZ2iJAc&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result#PPA267,M1
So from around the year 1600, measurements of uncalibrated thermometers were being taken, which became increasingly accurate as the technology improved. By 1659 the measurements were being calibrated to some degree of accuracy, and as the instruments were expensive were generally being read by trained people who handled them carefully. During the 1700’s there was a vogue for placing thermometers in unheated north facing rooms so temperatures could be taken in comfort, but this was seen as a backward ‘country’ habit which was frowned on by those with a more scientific approach and few of these records have survived.
The measurements -taken under proper conditions from 1660- were accurate to levels not surpassed until well into the 1900’s. The thermometers used in ‘global temperatures from 1850’ were often of poor quality, uncalibrated, placed in inappropriate positions (such as in full sun) and read by people who had no training.
GS Callendar complains in his notebooks about the variability of these readings from 1850 when there were only 100 global stations- of whom around half had much credibility. He restricted his investigations of his belief in rising temperatures caused by man to as few as 200 stations worldwide in 1936-38, during his investigation for his thesis that rising levels of co2 were driving global warming, which resulted in his seminal paper about CO2 in 1938.
TonyB
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…
Oh my gosh!
Go to Drudge!
Winter storm warning for DC whilst Al Gore gives his talk to congress.
Ron de Haan (14:59:27) :
Are you sure it’s not “Svansmark” from “Denmark?”
Novoburgo (15:56:01) :
‘Ron de Haan (14:59:27) :
Are you sure it’s not “Svansmark” from “Denmark?”
You are right, I need to wear my glasses.