Climate Through Human History

Reconstructing Past Climates - Instrumental records

Instrumental weather records are available for only the last 200 or so years.

Galileo (1564-1642) in full GALILEO GALILEI, Italian natural philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician who made fundamental contributions to the sciences of motion, astronomy, and strength of materials and to the development of the scientific method.

Torricelli, Evangelista (1608-1647) Italian physicist and mathematician who invented the barometer and whose work in geometry aided in the eventual development of integral calculus.

Basic meteorological instruments - Barometer (Torricelli) thermometer (Galileo) - invented during the first half of the 17th century.

Measurements cover as much as 300 years in only one or two places in the globe.

Instrumental records provide a directly measured history of climate. However, only over the last 100-150 years is there adequate coverage of measurements around the globe. Over much of the world, only a few decades of measured climate data exists.