IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/climat/v142y2017i1d10.1007_s10584-017-1931-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Temperature observations in Bologna, Italy, from 1715 to 1815: a comparison with other contemporary series and an overview of three centuries of changing climate

Author

Listed:
  • Dario Camuffo

    (Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate)

  • Antonio della Valle

    (Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate)

  • Chiara Bertolin

    (Norwegian University of Science and Technology – NTNU)

  • Elena Santorelli

    (Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate)

Abstract

The observations taken in Bologna, Italy, from 1715 to 1815, three times a day, with a number of thermometers (i.e., Stancari air thermometers, Little Florentine thermometer, Florentine stick thermometer and a number of Réaumur spirit and mercury thermometers) some of them operating in parallel, have been recovered and analysed. The early thermometers had unknown scales and temperature units, with deviations due to the bulb shape or the thermometric liquid, but it is possible to interpret them after comparison between parallel readings. Historical sources and the analysis of the data fingerprints and their variability permit recognition of where instruments were located and who the observers were. It is also possible to relate the indoor climate of historical buildings to the outdoor one, and transform indoor readings as they were taken outdoors, expressed in Celsius. The Bologna series has been compared with the contemporary observations in Padua, Venice and Milano. The climate analysis shows that the temperature fluctuated but with an increasing trend. The 1730–1770 decades constituted the coldest period and 1980—today the warmest one. The eighteenth century was generally cold and had an impressive frequency of extremely severe winters that exceeded the rest of the series. The whole dataset (i.e. 1715–2015) of daily temperatures has been included to allow further use for scientific purposes. Finally, the paper provides a methodological example of procedures to recover and analyse early instrumental series.

Suggested Citation

  • Dario Camuffo & Antonio della Valle & Chiara Bertolin & Elena Santorelli, 2017. "Temperature observations in Bologna, Italy, from 1715 to 1815: a comparison with other contemporary series and an overview of three centuries of changing climate," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 142(1), pages 7-22, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:climat:v:142:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s10584-017-1931-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s10584-017-1931-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-017-1931-2
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10584-017-1931-2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dario Camuffo & Antonio della Valle, 2016. "A summer temperature bias in early alcohol thermometers," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 138(3), pages 633-640, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dario Camuffo & Antonio della Valle & Francesca Becherini & Valeria Zanini, 2020. "Three centuries of daily precipitation in Padua, Italy, 1713–2018: history, relocations, gaps, homogeneity and raw data," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 162(2), pages 923-942, September.
    2. Dario Camuffo, 2020. "Key problems in early wine-spirit thermometers and the “true Réaumur” thermometer," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 163(2), pages 1083-1102, November.
    3. Dario Camuffo & Antonio della Valle & Francesca Becherini, 2021. "From time frames to temperature bias in temperature series," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 165(1), pages 1-23, March.
    4. Dario Camuffo & Francesca Becherini & Antonio Valle, 2019. "The Beccari series of precipitation in Bologna, Italy, from 1723 to 1765," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 155(3), pages 359-376, August.
    5. Dario Camuffo & Antonio della Valle & Francesca Becherini & Daniel Rousseau, 2020. "The earliest temperature record in Paris, 1658–1660, by Ismaël Boulliau, and a comparison with the contemporary series of the Medici Network (1654–1670) in Florence," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 162(2), pages 903-922, September.
    6. Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist & Peter Thejll & Bo Christiansen & Andrea Seim & Claudia Hartl & Jan Esper, 2022. "The significance of climate variability on early modern European grain prices," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 16(1), pages 29-77, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dario Camuffo & Antonio della Valle & Francesca Becherini & Daniel Rousseau, 2020. "The earliest temperature record in Paris, 1658–1660, by Ismaël Boulliau, and a comparison with the contemporary series of the Medici Network (1654–1670) in Florence," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 162(2), pages 903-922, September.
    2. Dario Camuffo, 2020. "Key problems in early wine-spirit thermometers and the “true Réaumur” thermometer," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 163(2), pages 1083-1102, November.
    3. Dario Camuffo & Francesca Becherini & Antonio Valle, 2021. "Daily temperature observations in Florence at the mid-eighteenth century: the Martini series (1756–1775)," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 1-19, February.
    4. Dario Camuffo & Francesca Becherini & Antonio della Valle, 2020. "Temperature observations in Florence, Italy, after the end of the Medici Network (1654–1670): the Grifoni record (1751–1766)," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 162(2), pages 943-963, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:climat:v:142:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s10584-017-1931-2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.