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The Basis: Past Climate Observations and Methods

  • Chapter
Climatic Changes Since 1700

Part of the book series: Advances in Global Change Research ((AGLO,volume 55))

  • 1216 Accesses

Abstract

If you are worried about a thunderstorm forming near your town, if snowfall is imminent, if an El Niño event builds up in the Pacific, or if media reports that a heatwave strikes Australia, you can find a large amount of real-time information on weather and climate on the Internet. Just a few mouse clicks away, you will find observations, analyses, model simulations, satellite images, Radar data, and many other products (Fig. 2.1). Where does information on the atmosphere come from, what does it really tell us, and how can we today explore the weather patterns of the 18th century? In this chapter, we will cover these questions, starting with some general considerations of weather observations and measurements, the present day observing system, and historical climate observations. We cover uncertainties and problems in climate data and see how models can be used to learn about past climate and how they can be combined with observations. This chapter also covers climate proxies and the methods used to derive climate information from these proxies. Finally, this chapter concludes with a more detailed description of those datasets that form the basis of many of the analyses that follow in Chaps. 3 and 4.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Albrecht von Haller, 1708–1777, was a Swiss physician (anatomist), scientist, and poet of the Enlightenment. He is said to have published ca. 50,000 pages of scientific works of consistently high quality.

  2. 2.

    Heinrich Brandes, 1777–1834, was a German meteorologist, astronomer, and mathematician.

  3. 3.

    James Pollard Espy, 1785–1860, was an American meteorologist and one of the first to use the telegraph for collecting meteorological observations.

  4. 4.

    Cleveland Abbe, 1838–1916, was an astronomer and meteorologist and founder of the U.S. Weather Bureau.

  5. 5.

    Matthew Fontaine Maury, 1806–1873, was an American scientist (oceanographer and meteorologist). He published the first comprehensive book on oceanography.

  6. 6.

    Heinrich Wilhelm Dove, 1803–1879, was a German physicist and meteorologist and one of the first to study global climate. He is known for his works on winds.

  7. 7.

    Julius Hann, 1839–1921, was an Austrian meteorologist and climatologist and one of the founders of modern meteorology. Hann is known for the Föhn theory, among many other achievements. His “Handbuch der Klimatologie” (Hann 1883, 1897, 1908–1911) set the standard for five decades (see Stehr and von Storch 2000).

  8. 8.

    Francis Galton, 1822–1911, was a British scientist, known for his work in statistics (correlation), meteorology (weather maps, anticyclones, and weather variability), and eugenics. Galton was a cousin of Charles Darwin.

  9. 9.

    Wladimir Köppen, 1846–1940, was a German–Russian meteorologist, geographer, and climatologist. Among many other things, Köppen developed a classification of climates that is still used today (Köppen 1881).

  10. 10.

    Henry Francis Blanford, 1834–1893, was a British meteorologist and palaeontologist and first director of the India Meteorological Department.

  11. 11.

    Sir Gilbert Walker, 1868–1958, was a British mathematician and meteorologist. Walker worked for the India Meteorological Department from 1904 to 1924. He is best known for his work on climatic oscillations and statistics.

  12. 12.

    Felix Exner, 1876–1930, was an Austrian meteorologist and director of the Austrian Meteorological Service (Zentralanstalt für Geodynamik). Exner made important contributions to dynamic meteorology.

  13. 13.

    Alexander von Humboldt, 1769–1859, was a Prussian geographer, naturalist, and explorer. He was one of the most famous scientists of his time. His main work, “Kosmos” (von Humboldt 1845) is a compendium of science and nature.

  14. 14.

    Heinrich Wild, 1833–1902, was Swiss meteorologist. Wild was a physics professor in Bern and later founder of the Main Geophysical Observatory in St. Petersburg, Russia.

  15. 15.

    “Barometer, pluviometer, and thermometer are the main instruments of the meteorologist and have been used for over 200 years. Yet one would be very mistaken to trust the old measurements. […] And then the old temperature observations! Here, the inadequacy of the instruments pairs with insufficient placement of the instruments to render the observations completely useless.” (translated from Brückner 1890, pp. 133–134).

  16. 16.

    This solution is equivalent to a Bayesian framework, where x b would be called prior and x posterior.

  17. 17.

    Vilhelm Bjerknes, 1862–1951, was a Norwegian Meteorologist. He is known for his work on synoptic meteorology and was the founder of the Geophysical Institute in Bergen. Vilhelm Bjerknes is the father of meteorologist Jacob Bjerknes.

  18. 18.

    Lewis Fry Richardson, 1881–1953, was pioneer in numerical analysis in meteorology, numerical weather prediction, and modelling of conflict (Hunt 1998).

  19. 19.

    The spectral representation characterises the horizontal structure with a series expansion of spherical harmonics, whose coefficients are then determined. Truncation (mostly triangular truncation, denoted “T”) indicates the highest wave number represented.

  20. 20.

    Edward Lorenz, 1917–2008, was an American mathematician and meteorologist, and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lorenz is the founder of chaos theory.

  21. 21.

    William Herschel, 1738–1822, was a British–German astronomer and composer. He discovered Uranus and several moons.

  22. 22.

    A temperature-dependent fractionation of water molecules with light or heavy oxygen isotopes (18O and16O) occurs during evaporation and condensation. This effect can be used for temperature reconstruction.

  23. 23.

    A spectrum in which all frequencies have the same power is called white, if low frequencies dominate it is called red, and if high frequencies dominate it is called blue.

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  1. Institute of Geography, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Stefan Brönnimann

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Brönnimann, S. (2015). The Basis: Past Climate Observations and Methods. In: Climatic Changes Since 1700. Advances in Global Change Research, vol 55. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19042-6_2

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