ABSTRACT
During the sixteenth century we reach the period from which a great many more documentary reports of the weather survive. This is particularly true for Europe, where the reports are increasingly specific, verifiable and often precisely dated. But also around this time documentary reports begin to be available for other parts of the world. And the middle and later seventeenth century provides the earliest instrument observation records. These, like the evidence of the glaciers in many parts of the world and of the Arctic sea ice, introduce us to a colder climate than that of the twentieth century. In England the late seventeenth-century thermometer record indicates annual mean temperatures about 0.9 °C (1.6 °F) lower than in the period 1920-60. Over the years 1690-9 the deficit was 1.5 °C (2.7 °F).
