Why? It’s a longperiod past Isaac Newton’s time, and HM government felt need to collect more measurements of Venus?

Here are some more cooling records to add to your previous post

Geoff

The waves of cold, Canadian air washing over the eastern United States brought a record low to Athens this morning, breaking a low-temperature mark that stood for 117 years.
http://onlineathens.com/stories/111908/new_357656965.shtml

Highs will be as much as 20 degrees below normal today throughout most of the East, challenging even more record cold high temperatures.

http://www.accuweather.com/news-top-headline.asp?partner=accuweather&traveler=0&date=2008-11-19_09:25

Global Cooling cuts the crime rate in Greenville County USA

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20081119/NEWS01/81119017/1001/NEWS

Thanks for that extract – I wonder what Kristian Birkeland was up to during this period – he was studying the northern aurora’s and carried out a few expeiditions to this region, but on land of course.

Could it be that at this time the auroral displays were more conspicuous due to an increase in electric currents to the earth which also had the side effect of warming it as well? We now know that billions of EV are entering the earth http://oilismastery.blogspot.com/2008/11/billions-of-electron-volts-hitting.html and this energy does not just disappear.

It is probably this surge in EM energy which is causing some of the observed warming and cooling that climate scientists, ignorant of electrical theory, have mis-identified as greenhouse gas behaviour.

The following is an extract from Climate4you link Climate and History Year 1919 to 1925. The latitude is given as 81 degrees 29minutes

The oceanographic observations have, however, been
even more iinteresting. Ice conditions were exceptional.
In fact, so little ice as has never before been noted. The
expedition all but established a record, sailing as far
north its 81″ 29′ in ice-free water. This is the farthest
north ever reached with modern oceanographic apparatus.
The character of the waters of the great polar basin
has heretofore been practically unknown. Dr. Hoel reports
that he made a section of the Gulf Stream at 81′
north latitude and took soundings to a depth of 3,100
meters. These show the Gulf Stream very warm, and it
could be traced as a surface current till beyond the 81st
parallel. The warmth of the waters makes it robable
time.
Later a section was taken of the Gulf Stream off Bear
Island and off the Isfjord, as well as a section of the cold
current that comes down along the west coast of Spitzbergen
off the south ca e.
to note the unusually warm summer in Arctic Norway
and the observations of Capt. Martin Ingebrigtsen, who
has sailed the eastern Arctic for 54 years past. He says
that he first noted wanner conditions in 1915, that since
that time it has steadily gotten warmer, and that to-day
the Arctic of that region is not recognizable as the same
re ion of 1865 to 1917.
Many old landmarks are so changed as to be unrecognizable.

End of extract

Google Earth has it at this position 78°21′29.17″N ; 19°12′37.39″E

The Islands are at the same latitude as the northern coast of Greenland.

If 400,000 years ago Spitzbergen hosted tropical species, then so ought Greenland, and I think we have a bit of a problem here. It implies the North Pole was tropical as well, so the existing equatorial regions would have been ????????

One side effect is that palaeoclimate studies may have some issues as well.

I recall that observation too – but even more interesting is the fact that 400,000 years ago the island of Spitzbergen hosted tropical species. Given its latitude and assuming it’s been there 400,000 years ago, then having a tropical climate at Spitzbergen implies a somewhat more torrid climate at the lower latitudes.

Our useful idiots seem to avoid this inconvenient fact.

When the ships returned, it was reported on record that the Arctic sea ice had almost completely melted. The expedition members were unable to offer an explanation for this, however.

Sorry, I don’t have the actual paper reference any more (when I read it, I was far more interested in its’ geology than its’ climatic comments) but it is available in the MacQ Uni library for those who may be interested

AGW proponents seem to prefer to ignore empirical data such as this in favour of 3x distant proxies

http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateAndHistory%201900-1949.htm#1922: The Changing Arctic; warming in Svalbard