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Climate Variations In Iceland

February 13, 2015
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By Paul Homewood

 

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http://en.vedur.is/media/loftslag/myndasafn/frodleikur/Einarsson.pdf

 

This study of the Icelandic Climate appeared in the World Survey of Climatology: 15: Climates of the Oceans, in 1984.

Of particular interest is the section on climatic variations.

 

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Note how much warmer than now it was up to 2500 years ago. The author goes on to describe the warmth of the Middle Ages, followed by the brutal cold of the Little Ice Age.

 

 

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Systematic observations began in 1845 at Stykkisholmur. Measurements there, and at other sites, showed the warm period from 1921-65, which was followed by the dramatic change in 1965 when temperatures fell to pre 1920 levels. (The one that was really due to station moves or something).

 

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Note that this graph is of 1971 origin. Therefore the 10-year averages don’t fully reflect the last cold period, which only started in 1965. Even so, the trend is obvious.

Meanwhile, below is what GISS now show as the “proper” adjusted temperature record for Reykjavik.

Any similarity is purely coincidental!

 

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http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/show_station.cgi?id=620040300000&dt=1&ds=12

from → Climate Change
6 Comments
  1. Mikky permalink
    February 13, 2015 1:31 pm

    I can confirm your conclusions, here is a plot of the 5 Icelandic records, 12-month moving means of RAW data, no sign of any major inhomogeneity, just some variability, not surprising for a water-ice phase transition region:

    That makes 2 clear errors from GISS (Paraguay and Iceland), are they the exception or the rule?

  2. Reality check permalink
    February 13, 2015 2:04 pm

    The older graph is 10 year overlapping means. The GISS graph is annual means.

  3. Mikky permalink
    February 13, 2015 4:22 pm

    Climate data from Iceland is available directly from the Icelandic Met Office website, not just for the small subset of GHCN stations but for many others (a few hundred approx). Many of these additional stations have monthly temperature data, both min and max. Here is the full list of stations, I think it starts in Reykjavik and goes clockwise around the country:

    http://en.vedur.is/Medaltalstoflur-txt/Manadargildi.html

    What is truly shocking is the large number of non-GHCN stations that appear to have good, long temperature records, gold-dust for someone who wants to do a proper job of checking for inhomogeneities, so there is possibly a truly shocking conclusions here, GHCN effectively threw away a lot of good data, massively increasing the chance of homogenisation errors, and then proceeded to make such errors.

  4. Bebben permalink
    February 13, 2015 10:17 pm

    Hi Paul, I wonder if you are aware of these data that can be found on Trausti Jonssons blog:

    http://icelandweather.blog.is/blog/icelandweather/entry/1249149/

    Best regards, Bjørn

    • Paul Homewood permalink*
      February 13, 2015 10:57 pm

      Thanks Bjorn

      Trausti sent them over a couple of years ago. I hope to do some more analysis next week

  5. smamarver permalink
    February 15, 2015 3:16 pm

    During 1939 – 1940, Iceland’s climate may have also been affected by war, like the entire Europe and Northern region. I have read some analysis of what happened in many countries, about the climate changes from those years. You can also find them here: http://www.2030climate.com/a2005/02_16-Dateien/02_16.html.

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