what instrument was used to measure the earth's temperature 100 years ago?
2007-02-26 18:36:25 · 4 answers · asked by WILLIAM H 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Weather
According to global warming proponents ,the earth temperature has risen 1 degree in the last 100 years.
How was this measured ?
2007-02-26 18:49:01 · update #1
As has been explaind in the previous answer, thermometers have been around for many hundreds of years.
Today's scientific instruments are extremely accurate but even 100 years ago they were accurate to within a fraction of a degree.
There are detailed and accurate weather records dating back over 100 years. In the US weather records typically go back 100 to 150 years, in the UK they go back significantly further. There are Chinese records that go back 3000 years although the early records are more observations than actual measurements.
Ice core samples have provided a record that stretches back 650,000 years and using oxygen isotopes it can be extended back to a little over half a billion years. This far back it's not possible to work out the temperature in a specific year but averages calculated over a period of time give an accurate figure.
In short, there's half a billion years worth of records with the records from the last couple of hundred years or so being very accurate.
2007-02-27 00:48:45 · answer #1 · answered by Trevor 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
A thermometer of some sort has been in use for far longer than the last century.
The first recorded thermometer was produced by the Italian, Santorio Santorio (1561-1636) who was one of a group of Venetian scientists working at the end of the Sixteenth Century.
The problem has been more to do with standards of measurement and predominantly, consistent records-management.
You could have a thermometer and pass it down through the family for 5 centuries, but did someone take the temperature every 4 hours, every day, every year, for those 5 centuries, AND WRITE IT DOWN? And if they did, were the records later destroyed by war, fire, flood, upset wife, etc.?
(just kidding about the upset wife, was picturing some guy getting up for the 4am measurement).
2007-02-26 20:06:45 · answer #2 · answered by favrashi 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Thermometers
2007-02-26 18:40:18 · answer #3 · answered by Dr Dee 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
This is monitired calculatively, there was no instrument. It was just estimated. Technology wasn't advanced enough last time.
2007-02-26 20:06:08 · answer #4 · answered by Unknown 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋