Climatic Data, Historical Records

Meeting Criteria

Only a few records come close to meeting these criteria, and most of them suffer from multiple deficiencies, usually because the instruments were shifted to nearby, but different sites. Thus, most records are, in fact, composite series, containing data from a number of sites in one area. One notable exception is the record of the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland 1796–2002. The resulting historical climate record is the longest for any single site in the United Kingdom and Ireland (although a gap 1825–33 was filled by data from two stations in Dublin). Only two other European stations have records as long at the Armagh series: Stockholm and Uppsala, both in Sweden.

The central England time-series of air temperature is the longest instrumental record in the world. It puts together data from a number of climate stations in England, namely, Ringway, Malvern, Squires Gate, and Rothampsted, for 1772-present. It was not until 1840 that the first official national archive of climate data was set up, housed at the Royal Greenwich Observatory near London.

A formal system of weather observations did not begin in the United States until 1818. However, climate data have been gleaned from private sources for several years prior to this. Of note is the reconstruction by R.D. Erhardt for the southern United States, using data from the private journals of Winthrop Sargent and William Dunbar. Measurements were taken near Natchez, Mississippi, commencing in 1798 and 1799, respectively. The Dunbar record includes daily measurements of air temperature, barometric pressure, wind direction, precipitation, and state of the sky for the hours of 0600, 1500, and 2100 local time 1799–1818. It is regarded as one of the best early instrumental records in the United States.

H.E. Landsberg and others assembled a composite temperature series from 1795 for the eastern United States. The main sources of climate data 1820–70 are archived by the Smithsonian Institute and the U.S. Army Medical Corp. Data. Records became plentiful following the establishment of the U.S. Signal Service in 1870 and the U.S. Weather Service in 1891. LJ. Darter has assembled a comprehensive listing of archived U.S. data.

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