> The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses a baseline for pre-industrial global mean temperatures that reference the earliest global instrumental temperature records. This period is around 1850–1900, when the first ship-based records of sea-surface temperatures became available.
I'm confused. The Smithsonian article says mean global temperature dropped as low as 3.6 F (2 C). The Wikipedia image shows mean global temperature dropped at most 0.5 C. What's the cause for this large discrepancy?
It might be confusing global temperatures with European temperatures. The article it references doesn't say global for the 2C figure and probably means regional temps. The European 2C makes sense, and the global 0.5C matches other sources.
I'm always wary about weasel words like "As Much As", especially with no direct reference to see how the original data was presented. I always just assume that means "By the most optimistic possible reading of the data that furthers the goal of this article" - so it may be that the value from the most extreme single data point of minimum->maximum is 3.6f.
The wikipedia graph even states in the description that "Little Ice Age was not a distinct planet-wide period but a regional phenomenon" - though that again in turn doesn't seem to be directly stated in the referenced citation and editorialization too....
That focuses on global temperatures where the little ice age only really impacted Europe. Is there a graph like that for just the areas impacted by the little ice age?
That is one of the most interesting and frightening graphs I've ever seen. Way more impactful than the hockeystick graph, all of our efforts over dozens if not hundreds of civilisations leading to this, quick end.
There are many layers of questions. At what percentage climate change is man made? What timeframe should we consider for the basis of measuring temprature changes? And so on.
Many countries changed from Julian to Gregorian calendar between 16th and 19th century.
When they did the switch - they skipped about 13 days (depends on when exactly they did it, for some it was 12 days).
And yes - the recorded monthly/quarterly/annual and hence min/max/avg temperature that we can find online [1] for the year particlar country switched is 0, NaN, YOLO, or maybe even negative ...
Hence combination of "average earth temperature" intially being set by just handfull of countries/records/rows would make you think that there was a small ice age, when it was just Christians (re)doing date math to catch up with actually natural seasons
PS [1] wife did some data analysis training during Covid lockdowns, students were given links to github "reference" annual temperature data and some outliers caught our attention
Because it makes no sense. An event that took place over hundreds of years obviously can't be a math error due to a change in calendar on one specific year.
If only they gave it the same extreme high-res scan treatment that they gave The Harvesters (if you click through to the wikimedia page it has a 30k by 22k pixel scan)
The paintings show some of the things they did in the colder climate. They don't show how they adapted, which was the same way human populations always adapt to things that affect food production one way or another: having fewer people to feed
FYI: A more recent hypothesis of the little ice age's cause has to do with the massive pandemic that hit American Indians: American Indians used fire to control vegetation, and European contact introduced diseases that caused a massive pandemic and general societal collapse.
Or, to put it mildly, the American Indians stopped massive burning projects, which introduced less carbon into the air.
Temperatures were steadily declining from at least roughly 1280, though it didn't reach the point of being termed "little ice age" until later.
If changes to native burning due to contact-spread diseases are to be responsible, it wouldn't make sense for the temperatures to be declining for 250 years or more prior to contact.
Without helmets. And often in just shoes — did you ever try walking in shoes on an ice skating rink? I guess it gets simpler with practice, still I wonder how many more % concussions and damaged wrists the cold weather caused
At the turn of XX century, in St. Petersburg they would lay rails on the ice of Neva and get a tram going across the river [1]
Will not possible nowdays due to a combination of climate change and the fact that megapolis makes its own weather - it now thaws regularly. Also not necessary due to all the bridges :)
Staring at my unused skis on my rack in the basement, and at a graph of climate averages for the last decade... and... A little ice age would be nice right around now.
Serious question: When we say mean annual temperature rose because of man-induced climate change, what is the time span we use for comparison?