THE Little Ice Age Thermometers project is an attempt to compile instrumental readings from 1660 that predate the era of modern ‘global temperatures’ as recorded by the Climate Research Unit (CRU)/ Hadley Centre in the UK since 1850 and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) since 1880.
The project demonstrates that climate variability prior to the modern era is much greater than officially recognised, and that global records are measured from troughs of the little ice age and should therefore cause no surprise when they subsequently rise.
Context to past temperatures that predate instrumental records can be found by examining the various articles within this web site regarding the warmer Medieval warm period (MWP) and Roman warm optimum and the world wide impacts of these- and other- warm and cold events. There are also many links to other web sites contaning invaluable information.
Modern warming – where it exists- often appears to be an artefact of the way temperatures are compiled, or represent very real warming caused locally by the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. UHI is poorly calculated in correction factors used in the global temperature datasets although they themselves are a reflection of the dramatic urbanisation of the world during the past fifty years.
This web site therefore exists primarily as the means to examine historic aspects of climate change in the belief this will help to put the modern era into context, as merely a continuation of what has occurred in the past.
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
Tony Brown
tony AT thefamilybrown.freeserve.co.uk
NikFromNYC says
I have plotted updated versions of many of these:
http://i47.tinypic.com/2zgt4ly.jpg
http://i45.tinypic.com/125rs3m.jpg