Sea surface temperature is another highly inaccurate measurement of Global warming and cooling. The current system of measuring the oceans using ARGO floats will also prove to be a very accurate way of determining Global temperature averages. This means of measuring water temperatures is less than 10 years old. We've taken great steps in finding a more accurate means of establishing temperature averages and it would be detrimental to be so arrogant as to believe our past methods of measuring temperature averages are a tell-tale sign of future temperature movements.
There's still a lot to learn about the climate before we can make judgments as to how the World is reacting to our presence. History shows a very general description of how the temperatures were. Getting an average from selected proxy data is by no means a very accurate and precise temperature record of the Planet.
We're getting there, but we are far from being totally accurate. I'd give it another 50 years using our current methods before we can be truly accurate.
The earliest unbroken temperature record dates from 1659 (HadCET). By 1850 the UK had a global network of recording stations, by the late 1880’s the US had one too.
It was in the 1970’s that a system was developed that allowed for global temperature comparisons. This is NOT the same as maintaining a temperature record.
What you seem to be assuming is that because global temperature comparisons hadn’t been conducted, that there was no data. What do you think they used to do the comparisons with if no temperature records existed?
For the benefit of those who may be interested in the answer to the question, it’s normal practice to take 1880 as being the start of the recorded temperature record, prior to this is the reconstructed record.
The recorded temperature record uses data from instruments such as thermometers and satellites, the reconstructed record uses a variety techniques such as atmospheric chemical analyses, biological and ecological evidence, hydrological observations, the geological record etc.
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RE: YOUR ADDED DETAILS
If we take the temp record as starting in 1880, then 1934 set a record AT THAT TIME, being the hottest of the 55 years in the record. Since then there have been 61 hotter years and 1934 now ranks 62nd out of 134 years.
Progressively since 1880 the hottest years have been: 1880, 1882, 1889, 1900, 1914, 1915, 1931, 1934, 1937, 1938, 1973, 1980, 1981, 1988, 1990, 1995, 1998, 2005, 2007, 2010.
The ten hottest years are: 2010, 2007, 2005, 1998, 2006, 2002, 2003, 2009, 2012, 2011. If you want to include 2013 then it’s currently in 7th place.
1934 held the global record until 1937. For the US only it held the record until last year.
You seem to be (deliberately) missing the point.
This was (and still is) a record of observations made at thousands of locations around the world with about a billion datapoints being recorded each year. The earliest records date from about 1600 and used thermoscopes, the earliest continuous record dates from 1659
Each station had it’s own record. Each organisation such as the National Weather Service in the US, the Met Office in the UK or the India Meteorological Department, had their own record. What hadn’t been established was a method of estimating the CHANGE in global temperatures.
You seem to be implying that because no-one had previously modelled how the global temperature was changing, there weren’t any temperature records. That’s like saying, no-one has calculated how much money is spent globally repairing broken windows therefore glass doesn’t exist.
Just because Hansen's started his analysis in the 1970's doesn't mean that the temperatures only go back to then--the NASA GISS temperatures go back to 1880.
Pat's idea that satellite temperatures would be more accurate than in situ temperatures is extremely naive. Satellite measurements depend on a chain of things being done correctly, and initially Spencer wasn't even close and his numbers had to be corrected by others. While most of those problems presumably have been corrected, I'll take a direct measurement with a calibrated thermometer anytime.
jim z, if you don't think Mann and others are accurate, do your own research and publish it. Just making the claim with nothing to back it up isn't worth much.
show me the 1700 's records that were taken from the same place or even close . The only records are only 110 year or so . Not a lot to go on. Yes the temp was taken . but the records were not kept
The geologic record doesn't indicate we are particularly warm. In FACT, the geologic record indicates we live in unusually cold times. It has been cold for 2 and a half million years. It is true that we are unusually warm relative to the last million years but that doesn't have anything to do with humans (or almost nothing to do with us). We are just fortunate to be born in a warm interglacial. Recorded history, human history, confirms that temperature was variable. Warm periods were associated with prosperity and cold periods with famine and disease. It was warm when the Romans were at their peak and it was warm when the Vikings were at theirs a thousand years ago. It then cooled to about 500 years ago and began warming out of the Little Ice Age. Since then, there has been a couple of warming and cooling periods. The 1970s were relatively cool but alarmists like Trevor like to pretend to know it was from aerosols. In fact, they don't know and it is more of a wild guess, than science. The temperature "record" is not easily calculated. It is biased in location and interpretation. It is open to further bias and interpretation as we have all witnesses as Mann and Hansen have laid waste to the previous "record" in an attempt to exaggerate the present. Our self proclaimed climate scientists seem to have no problems or skepticism since they can use it to blame their hated Exxon Mobil and capitalism on the warming. They only tend to blame those who are skeptical.
many things 'record' temperatures, Ice cores, sediments, tree rings and oral history(e,g frost/crop failures, ice on river Thames etc). we know ice ages happened even if humans had not yet invented thermometers.
so what's your point? Even if we had thermometers going back 10,000 years, you'd likely claim temps went up because of urban heat island.
1988-2013 everything else never happened
We hear that these 2000 years and 1998 were the 'ten hottest years in recorded history. When did that recorded history start? NASA says this on their web site, "The basic GISS temperature analysis scheme was defined in the late 1970s by James Hansen when a method of estimating global temperature change was needed for comparison with one-dimensional global climate models. Most prior temperature analyses, notably those of Murray Mitchell, covered only 20-90°N latitudes. Our first published results (Hansen et al. 1981) showed that, contrary to impressions from northern latitudes, global cooling after 1940 was small, and there was net global warming of about 0.4°C between the 1880s and 1970s."
So we can see that by Hansen's admission that it started no earlier than the late seventies. Is this true?
