The Weather of the 1780s Over Europe

Abstract

John Kington's book, the first of its kind, gives a definitive account of the weather in the 1780s over Europe based on historical weather maps. These charts are unique in forming the earliest series of daily synoptic weather maps constructed with quantitative instrumental data, and as such represent an important contribution to the history of climate.

Monthly mean pressure reconstructions for Europe for the 1780–1995 period

“…Two other sets of gridded data are available in digital form: (a) the January and July charts since 1750 developed by Lamb and Johnson (1966); and (b) data digitised from the daily charts produced for the 1781-1785 period by Kington (1980Kington ( , 1988. The quality of both datasets has been addressed in Jones et al (1987).…”

“…The reconstructions are compared with other monthly mean pressure maps produced by Lamb and Johnson (1966) for the years 1780-1872 and by Kington (1980Kington ( , 1988 for 1781 -1785. Both of these map series show systematic biases relative to the present reconstructions.…”

“…Early attempts to utilise this wealth of MSLP data were concentrated in two areas: the hand-drawn construction of (a) monthly charts for January and July since 1750 by Lamb and Johnson (1966);and (b) daily charts for selected periods, particularly the 1780s (Kington, 1980(Kington, , 1988. The advent of high-speed computers, however, has negated the need to laboriously plot all the data onto charts.…”

“…The reconstruction method is the same as that used by Jones et al (1987) and is briefly outlined in Section 3. The quality of the reconstructions is assessed in Section 4, and comparisons with earlier work (Lamb and Johnson, 1966;Jones et al, 1987;Kington, 1988) are addressed in Section 5. Some conclusions and suggestions for further improvements are made in the final section.…”

“…The relationships are derived over a calibration period and the results tested with independent data (the verification period, . The reconstructions are of excellent quality, although this is slightly lower for regions with poor station coverage in the early years, particularly during the summer months.The reconstructions are compared with other monthly mean pressure maps produced by Lamb and Johnson (1966) for the years 1780-1872 and by Kington (1980Kington ( , 1988 for 1781 -1785. Both of these map series show systematic biases relative to the present reconstructions.…”