History Of European Climate

[hugogo]

Hello,

I'm currently working on a summary of European climate from the end of the 18th century to the end of the 19th century. I am therefore looking for any information concerning weather extremes all over Europe from 1770 to 1890. My work concerns especially warm and cold events [mild/cold winters, springs, summers and falls].

In order to be able to describe these events with as much precision as possible, its of course preferable to have contemporary temperature data from these events, rather than the subjective points of view of observers. I already have a lot of daily data from quite a few weather stations starting at the end of the 18th century or in the first half of the 19th centuru [Oxford since the 1850s, CET since 1772, Stockholm since 1756, Milan since 1768, Bologna since 1813, Prague since 1775, Iena since the 1820s, Vienna since the 1850s, Madrid since the 1860s, Armagh since the 1860s, Brussels since the 1760s], and I would be very grateful if you could provide any other temperature readings from this period, more precisely concerning any of these events:

February/March 1772.

November/December 1774.

January-March 1775, very mild.

Summer 1775 [July-September], very hot.

January 1776: freezing.

March 1777, very warm.

October 1778, very cold.

February-April 1779, very warm.

Summer 1779 [July-November], very warm.

year 1781 [very warm], very hot.

April/May 1782 cold.

Summer/Autumn 1783 [hot].

winter 1784: freezing.

September 1784 [hot].

October 1784 [extrmeely cold].

March 1785: incredibly freezing.

September 1785 [warm].

March 1786: freezing.

Summer 1786 [unseasonably cold].

November 1786: freezing.

summer 1788 [hot].

Winter 1789: one of the coldest ever.

summer 1789 [hot].

Winter 1790 [October-March] unseasonably warm.

February-May 1794 [warm].

winter 1795: freezing.

April-May 1795 [warm]

June/July 1795 [cold].

September/october 1795 [hot].

Winter 1796: unseasonably warm.

January/February 1797 [warm].

may-September 1798 [hot].

winter 1799: freezing.

March-MAY 1799 [ very cold].

winter 1800: freezing.

April/May 1800 [extremely hot].

July/august 1800 [hot].

august 1801 [cold].

july 1802 [cold].

August 1802: hot.

October 1802: hot.

winter 1803: freezing.

November 1803: cold.

march-april 1803: very warm.

september 1804: warm

April May 1805: cold.

October 1805: cold.

April 1807: cold.

august 1807: hot.

September 1807: cold.

July 1808: hot.

march/april 1809: cold.

May-july 1811: HOT.

april-sept 1812: cold.

jan-feb 1814: cold.

april 1814: cold.

year 1816: very cold.

winter 1820: freezing.

October-May 1821/1822 [hot].

october/november 1822: hot.

winter 1823: freezing.

summer 1823: cold.

sept/october 1824: cold.

April/may 1825: hot.

summer 1825: hot.

sept/october 1825: hot.

summer 1826: very hot.

Sept/october 1826: hot.

april 1827: very warm.

winter 1828: warm.

july 1828: hot.

november/december 1828: warm.

winter 1829: freezing.

Sept-nov 1829: cold.

winter 1830: coldest in the past 300 years.

march/april 1830: warm.

summer 1830: cool.

july 1832: cold.

May 1833: very hot.

july-august 1833: very cold.

winter 1834: incredibly warm.

July-September 1834: hot.

May 1835: cold.

August 1835: cold.

October-November 1836: cold.

Spring 1837: incredibly cold.

winter 1838: freezing.

summer/automn 1840: cold.

December 1842: warm.

october 1843: cold.

march 1845: freezing.

january/february 1846: incredibly warm.

Summer 1846: burning.

Sept 1847: cold.

Sept 1850: cold.

April 1852: cold.

Spring 1853: cold.

summer 1856: cool.

November 1856: freezing.

August/september 1858: hot.

November 1858: freezing.

March 1859: warm.

Summer 1860: very cold.

Sept/October 1860: cold.

Summer 1862: cold.

May 1864: cold.

August 1864: cold.

March 1865: freezing.

April/May 1865: hot.

Summer 1865: cold.

September 1865: hot.

winter 1866: very mild.

May 1866: cold.

october 1866: cold.

december 1866: mild.

May 1867: cold.

April-September 1868: incredibly warm.

January-February 1869: hot.

summer 1869: cold.

sept/oct 1869: alternations between very warm and very cold weather.

Winter 1871: freezing.

April-June 1871: cold.

September 1871: cold.

September 1872: hot.

August 1876: hot.

May 1877: cold.

September 1877: cold.

October/november 1880: cold.

June 1881: cold.

November 1881: hot.

March 1883: cold.

march 1888: cold.

I have already read all the related topics on this forum.

Of course, if you don't have any data but you have any quotes from contemporary writers or if you know about any weather-related facts from the time, please do not hesitate to post them here!

Thank you very much.

Hugo.

PS: please note that these events concerned at least one part of Europe, but not necessarily western Europe: indeed some of these episodes saw normal weather over the UK, and incredible cold over central Europe or Scandinavia.

[AderynCoch]

I'll be happy to help when I get the time.

For the time being, here's a useful link: http://booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/histclimat.htm

[AderynCoch]

http://www.meteolink.nl/weerhistorie/tabellen/

Temperature tables, graphs and charts for some notably cold winters between 1740 and 1855 in Zwanenburg (near Amsterdam). Some of the pages have notes to go along with them, though they're in Dutch.

The coldest month in the period covered seems to be January 1823 (-7.0C), followed by January 1838 (-6.6C) - the maximum on 24th January 1823 was -17.8C. Also notable is the maximum of -9.4C as late as 13th March in 1845.

[cheeky_monkey]

incredibly warm?...incredibly freezing?...and Burning? are they techincal terms?

[hugogo]

when the terms incredible appear, it means that there either was:

-record breaking temperatures in at least one place in Europe.

-Extreme temperatures over widespread areas on the continent.

-Extreme temperatures over much of Europe.

For example, the summer of 1826 and even more 1846 were incredibly hot over much of Europe, winter 1834 ranks amongst the top 5 warmest in western europe in the past 350 years, etc...

[Weather-history]

Hello hugugo

I have written a number of articles on some of the events you have mentioned

If you go to UKweatherworld via this link, I have indexed articles that I and others have written on past events articles.

http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/forums/forum-view.asp?fid=21

Edited April 9, 2011 by Mr_Data

[hugogo]

Thank you very much for those links, some interesting details!

Among all the episodes I have studied, here are some of them:

Summer 1783, extremely war especially in Scandinavia:

Second half of june averaged 19.0 degrees in Stockholm [+3.6/average], July Averaged 21.2 degrees [+3.8] with the 11 last days being at 22.9 [+5.0], September averaged 14.6 [+2.8] and October 10.0 [+3.6]!

October 1784, cold everywhere in Europe:

a lot of frost and even snow [uK, Switzerland, France and Belgium], max temp of 2.7 in Paris at month's end.

Monthly average of 5.8 in Berlin, 6.4 in Vienna, 7.4 in Paris.

Summer 1786: one of the coldest ever over Europe, especially over central Europe.

May: In Prague, absolute max temperature of only 20.2 degrees, and average max is 3.7 degrees below normal.

June: extremely cold beginning in Scandinavia, Average of just 6.4 on the 10th in Stockholm, 7.8 on the 16th.

July:

In Prague, average max of only 19.8, only 2 max over 25 degrees and 15 over 20 degrees... absolute max of just 26.8

Between the 11th and the 20th, Prague saw an average max 7.1 degrees below normal [average min was 4.8 degrees below average] and an absolute max of just 20.3 degrees...

The deficit of the maximum temps even reaches 6.9 degrees between the 6th and the 22nd in Prague!

August: even worse over central Europe:

In Prague: absolute max of just 22.2 degrees, only 9 days saw a max over 20 degrees. average max of 18.9 degrees [5.6 below average]

Between the 30th of july and 1st of sept, deficit as high as 5.6 degrees on maximum temps in Prague.

September: absolute high of 22.3 in Prague, 5 max temps over 20 degrees, average max of 16.4 degrees with the last ten days seeing an average max of just 12.4 degrees!

October: deficit of 5.5 degrees on max temps in Prague.

Between the 29th of april and 26th of November, average max temp in Prague is 4.5 degrees below normal!!

Average temp in Berlin: 16.5 in July, 16.9 in august, 12.2 in Spetember.

In Vienna, average temp 13.3 in june, 17.8 in july, 17.1 in august, 14.2 in sept.

In Paris, average 16.5 in Paris, 17.2 in august, 13.8 in Sept!

[hugogo]

Also, I was wondering if anyone had ever seen this German study on the severe winter 1709:

http://www.met.fu-berlin.de/~manfred/Winter1709.pdf

Any one fluent in German? I still haven't managed to understand what the second table shows: absolute minimum temperature, average? And what unit are these figures in?

Thank you.

[sebastiaan1973]

http://www.knmi.nl/klimatologie/daggegevens/antieke_wrn/index.html Here you can find lots of data. Day to day. Several stations in the Netherlands.

[hugogo]

Thank you very much sebastian, undoubtably some very important information in these files. However, I am able to download the files but not to open them on my computer "there is no default application specified to open the document"]. Does anyone know how I could overcome this problem?

Thank you.

[hugogo]

OK, managed to read this files from the knmi website: very interesting data.

Has anyone got an idea of what units the values in the 2nd table on the german study are in? I'm having trouble with this, and have been stuck on it for the past year, without finding any logical explanation to why the values shown in this table aren't the same as those shown in the tables at the end of the study.

Also it should be noted that at the end of the study there are several tables showing daily minima for some European weather observatories at the time: Upminster, Berlin, Halle, Kiel, Danzig, Copenhagen and Montpellier. This shows how much the cold of 1709 was widespread over Europe, and how unusually intense it was in some regions: Germany, France and the UK especially.

Thank you

[raingod]

I'll be happy to help when I get the time.

For the time being, here's a useful link: http://booty.org.uk/.../histclimat.htm

This is extraordinarily useful. Thank you. I am interested in French weather, particularly in the Massif Central during the 1760s. Any information, or clues as to where to start looking gratefully received.