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Philadelphia resident named Charles Pierce started keeping detailed records of the weather and climate, which has been archived on Google Books.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.
Ron,
TOBS is an artifact of relying on min/max thermometers, rather than reading the actual temperature.
Pierce was taking actual temperature measurements and his choice of times were excellent. Probably some of the most unbiased data in the record.
A better knowledge of boundary conditions and the mathematics of chaos theory and feedback mechanisms would help in making points and counterpoints in this discussion. Unfortunately we have neither. However I do believe that until the sun itself enters its death-throws, the Earth’s climate will always trend back to its mean from whatever extremes it experiences from whatever forcings comes its way.
That was back in the day when warm weather brought out yellow fever. If you were anybody at all, you left Philly for your country estate.
@magicjava (13:19:01) :
“…Want to comment on this, but there are not too many things I’m less interested in than Philadelphia….”
You and W.C.Fields: Here lies W. C. Fields. I would rather be living in Philadelphia.
This was an epitaph Fields proposed for himself in a 1925 article in Vanity Fair. It refers to his long standing jokes about Philadelphia (his actual birthplace), and the grave being one place he might actually not prefer to be. This is often repeated as “On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.”, or “All things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.” which he might have stated at other times. [Wikipedia] {Surely they can do some things right}
What’s the deal with Philly? Too cold?
Icarus (13:41:46) :
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.
————————————————————-
Which means, if you were correct, that the Anthropogenic signal would be clear and pronounced…..
But it is not. It is not really discernable within the noise of natural climate variation….. Now that you realize this. You must think again about the observations and how they differ from the “models”.
Japanese archaeology on the climate in the Jomon period.
The alarmists are not so much dumb or stupid, but blinkered by groupthink: the desire to please, to get along, to win the approval of peers, to succeed in jobs and career, and (most worrisome) to be part of a grand crusade to save the world from the evils brought about by the modern world, especially the greedy, Western, capitalist world, so obsessed with material comforts and the pursuit of wealth that it ignores ‘the environment’ and the health of ‘the planet’ (never mind that it’s rich countries that can afford clean air, nice parks, and quaint boutiques selling trinkets from ‘primitive’ lands).
In other words, as as so often been pointed out on this board, it’s not the science, but a perversion of science in the service of an ideological movement. In such circumstances truth takes a backseat to the desperate need to prove oneself worthy of the others in the movement (see Eric Hoffer, The True Believer. The fact of a degree Celsius or two doesn’t matter; what matters is being on the ‘right’ side in the glorious struggle to save humanity from itself.
Most of these faux scientists are not so much ideologues themselves, as ‘fellow travelers’, ‘useful idiots’ (in Lenin’s phrase); they are time servers, putting their mundane work toward accepted goals. The leaders are not interested in the science, either, except as it suits their ends, which are power and control of the movement and defeat of its enemies.
Never forget that many here are ‘the enemy’.
/Mr Lynn
@ur momisugly Steve Goddard (18:46:42) :
Is this what Pierce is doing?
MonthlyAve1 = [ SUM [ foreachDay(T.sunrise + T.2pm + T.10pm) / 3) ] ] / (number of days)
Or maybe this?
MonthlyAve2 = [ SUM [ foreachObs(T) ] ] / (number of Obs)
Or another way?
And once you have determined Pierce’s method, is it correct to compare Peirce’s averages directory to a series built like this?
MonthlyAve3 = [ SUM [ foreachDay (Tmax + Tmin) / 2 ] ] / (number of days)
If someone can provide a Pierce’s algorithm for creating a monthly average I’d like to compare it to a Tmax/min algorithm.
Also if someone can provide a link to daily weather data, I’d be much obliged. Else I’m gonna have to scrape some 31 days of daily data:
http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KPAEASTO7&month=1&day=1&year=2010&format=1
Thanks in advance!
Loss of many major coastal cities including mine (I live at sea level)
Increased drought
Increased wildfires
Death of most tropical coral and livelihood of millions of people
Heatwaves killing tens of thousands
Widespread destruction of rainforest
Major cities abandoned as glacier-fed water supplies dry up
Massive crop failure
Southern Europe turns to desert
Massive extinctions
Oceans are largely dead as overturning ceases
Take out the “extra dryness” and most of those turn out to be the same thing.
Problem is, global warming won’t cause droughts. Higher temperatures mean increased evaporation. The equatorial areas of the world are hardly dry after all. The dry areas are hot because they are dry, not vice-versa. The Sahara, Gobi etc are all in areas where the prevailing wind does not bring rain. Nothing about global warming will change this. Southern Europe getting hotter will not make it one jot drier.
The running out of “glacier fed” water is silly beyond belief. If the glaciers were not melting then they would provide no water at all. Yet apparently you believe non-melting glaciers provide more water than melting ones. How does that work?
That leaves the silly myth about rising sea levels. I can’t argue logically with that, because it is one of those religious beliefs that ignore facts. At current rates the sea will rise far less than 20 cm by 2100.
And the sea “dying” is one of those lovely scare stories that is possible but implausible. We have no actual evidence for it. We do have evidence that back in the past when the seas were warmer that animals thrived in it. Or do you have some evidence of mass maritime extinctions caused by over-heating you wish to share with paleontology?
Sorry, forgot to add: increase evaporation from warming leads to increased precipitation. The Antarctic is very cold, and sees almost no precipitation. Fiji is very hot, and sees plenty of rain. I would prefer to live in Fiji myself.
This website sucks as usual.
REPLY: as does your level of commentary, which is childish
CET vs Pierce
http://i49.tinypic.com/25p7ln7.gif
Ron,
Both of your suggested methods will give the same answer – the associative law.
( ( (a0 + b0 + c0) / 3 ) + ( ( a1 + b1 + c1) / 3 ) ) / 2 =
(a0 + b0 + c0 + a1 + b1 + c1) / 6
By using three equally spaced times during the day, he is probably getting a meaningful average temperature. More meaningful than picking a random time to record a min/max thermometer and applying an arbitrary TOBS adjustment.
I’m in North Carolina right now. Four foot drifts of snow. I didn’t pack long underwear. I mean… it’s North Carolina right?
Time to adjust to the new realities.
Yeah – I realized that during my drive home tonight! 😀
But, Steve – you are avoiding the heart of the question.
Does the average of T.sunrise + T.2pm + T.10pm give substantially the same result as the average of T.max + T.min?
If not, then is it correct to compare them directly?
But I think I’m just going to have to calculate it myself.
I don’t seem to be getting an answer here.
It’s notoriously dull. I lived there and the only excitement was the aggressive drivers, some of whom virtually chased pedestrians up onto the sidewalk.
Those interested in Historic temperatures should go to my web site here where a substantial nunmber of pre 1850 records have been collated;
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
The red dots signify actual instrumenetal readings, the yellow dots signify observations- including weather diaries such as the one from Philadelphia.
Within the articles download section are a number of articles I have written-some carried here-which analyse such as the Uppsalla and Central Park records.
I hope to do an update shortly and add several more records and articles including this one which related the life of Charlers Dickens to the temperatures of the time and discovered that the image he conjured up of constant Freezing British winters was often illusory.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/bah-humbug/
If anyone has any old records they want me to add some links would be appreciated
Tonyb
The SUM(T.obs) below refers to a sum of all non-NULL values for the first entry at 07:xx:xx, 014:xx:xx, and 22:xx:xx. (ie 7am, 2pm, and 10pm). Since some values were null, I just summed the non-null values with no regard for which day they came from.
This is the average using both methods for a sample of three Pennsylvania weather stations in January 2010. See link above for sample data page.
KPACHEST4:
SUM(foreachDay(T.max+T.min))/(2*num of days) => 33.3
SUM(T.obs)/(num of obs) => 33.3
KPABETHL10:
SUM(foreachDay(T.max+T.min))/(2*num of days) => 30.2
SUM(T.obs)/(num of obs) => 30.2
KPABLOOM2:
SUM(foreachDay(T.max+T.min))/(2*num of days) => 28.3
SUM(T.obs)/(num of obs) => 28.1
So close enough for govt work. 😉
Steve Goddard (18:02:43) :
Hansen’s whole tipping point idea is based around the idea that increased greenhouse gases and loss of albedo feed back and overwhelm all other “forcings” – leading the planet to an irreversible Venus like state.
He can’t then turn around and claim that this theory works sometimes and not others. Using his logic, it should also be impossible to come out of an ice age – certainly not by a “very weak forcing.”
Or does he also believe that a “very weak forcing” could reverse his “tipping point?”
His logic is completely scattered
I think you need to read what Hansen actually says. For example:
“The Earth’s climate becomes more sensitive as it becomes very cold, when an amplifying feedback, the surface albedo, can cause a runaway snowball Earth, with ice and snow forming all the way to the equator. If the planet gets too warm, the water vapor feedback can cause a runaway greenhouse effect. The ocean boils into the atmosphere and life is extinguished. The Earth has fell off the wagon several times in the cold direction, ice and snow reaching all the way to the equator. Earth can escape from snowball conditions because weathering slows down, and CO2 accumulates in the air until there is enough to melt the ice and snow rapidly, as the feedbacks work in the opposite direction. The last snowball Earth occurred about 640 million years ago. Now the danger that we face is the Venus syndrome. There is no escape from the Venus Syndrome. Venus will never have oceans again. Given the solar constant that we have today, how large a forcing must be maintained to cause runaway global warming? Our model blows up before the oceans boil, but it suggests that perhaps runaway conditions could occur with added forcing as small as 10-20 W/m2.
There may have been times in the Earth’s history when CO2 was as high as 4000 ppm without causing a runaway greenhouse effect. But the solar irradiance was less at that time. What is different about the human-made forcing is the rapidity at which we are increasing it, on the time scale of a century or a few centuries. It does not provide enough time for negative feedbacks, such as changes in the weathering rate, to be a major factor. There is also a danger that humans could cause the release of methane hydrates, perhaps more rapidly than in some of the cases in the geologic record. In my opinion, if we burn all the coal, there is a good chance that we will initiate the runaway greenhouse effect. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale (a.k.a. oil shale), I think it is a dead certainty.”
So this gradual increase in solar irradiance over billions of years can account for why it is possible for the Earth to come out of an ice age but not out of a (potential) runaway greenhouse state. Does that make sense?
Sam (13:48:29) :
The British Navy was famous for keeping careful records of everything occurring on board their ships. Consider this fascinating tidbit from history.
Go to Google Books. Look up page 25 of the title Anglo-American strategic relations and the Far East, 1933-1939.
FDR was interested in the British expedition of 1777 up the Hudson River. He asked his ambassador to Great Britain if he could obtain the logs of the HMS Preston and Dependence. It seems those two ships had fired on the land that became the family estate Hyde Park. Several cannon balls had been found in the area and FDR wanted to know their history.
The logs specified the dates and times the cannon were fired. FDR was delighted with these highly personal details and it certainly did the British no harm to make the President of the United States happy at a time they needed all the friends they could get.
This event provides evidence of the fidelity with which the Royal Navy kept their logs.
To bad other British institutions today cannot keep accurate records entrusted to their care.
Icarus (17:33:32) :
Seriously? How about:
Loss of many major coastal cities including mine (I live at sea level)
Increased drought
Increased wildfires
Death of most tropical coral and livelihood of millions of people
Heatwaves killing tens of thousands
Widespread destruction of rainforest
Major cities abandoned as glacier-fed water supplies dry up
Massive crop failure
Southern Europe turns to desert
Massive extinctions
Oceans are largely dead as overturning ceases
So, a couple of degrees warming is going to cause all those impacts? ROTFLMAO … You’ve been reading WWF, Greenpeace, etc. articles way too much.
For the rest of us, we check history and guess what? None of those situations accompanied a couple of degree warming. At least we now know that you, like the IPCC, consider activist organization reports to be factual.
I think I’ll stay with real science and use logic instead of emotion.
Icarus (02:46:17), Hansen’s statement makes no sense whatsoever.
All you have to is look at the CO2 linear increase based on the exponential increase in CO2 emissions. The Earth is having no problem sequestering CO2 at an increasing rate. That means we will not see his “modelled” levels of CO2 in the atmosphere EVER. And of course, that pretty much demolishes his conclusions.
Next, try to understand why the Earth had a habitable climate with 30% less radiation from the sun … could there possibly be a thermostat controlling the climate? Could this possibly be something called H2O? Could it be anything else? Why would that effect stop now?
Have you ever tried using critical thinking?
Steve Goddard (18:02:43) :
At this point, I can’t even figure out what your objection to the theory of the ice age cycle is. The orbital forcing has feedbacks from albedo and CO2. I really don’t see how this is difficult, or inconsistent with anything.
Your impression of what the theory is, and what it actually is, seem to be two rather different things.
IN any case, I’m still puzzled by the point of this article, beyond just the fun of digging up an old record. Who knows if those measurements from 1790 can be directly compared to the current stations. For being on a website very concerned with microsite influences, it should not be controversial that changes in location, instrument and other practice can affect the absolute readings. As for the TOB issue, I’m glad that Ron Broberg at least seems willing to actually see how comparable the two methods are.
But beyond that, what meaning is there in comparing a single warm January in some city, to a single cold January in that city? What’s relevant are the trends over time, either regionally or globally; over course there is still weather on top of those trends. And again, the cold snap of this Dec/Jan was quite regional, as I suspect the global numbers will soon confirm. I know this site tends to put ‘climate is not weather’ disclaimers on weather stories, but one wonders if the readership quite appreciated that during the spate of stories about the (regional) cold snap.
What evidence is there that Venus ever had oceans, or indeed a more temperate climate? It has a much thicker atmosphere than Earth, and is much closer to the Sun. We don’t need to postulate a ‘runaway greenhouse effect’ to explain the temperature at the surface.
/Mr Lynn
Ron Broberg (02:15:27) :
Your spot-check on the TOB question was quite interesting and appreciated. Perhaps it wasn’t unexpected, since 7 am is close-ish to the usual daily minimum and 2 pm is close to the usual maximum, are they not? If that is so, then I guess the 10 pm observation should be pretty close to the daily mean. Did you post more about your calculation somewhere?
My only concern would be how you handled the nulls. If you used all non-null data, and there were more nulls at 7 am than 2 pm, or vice versa, that would mess with the results.