The Titanic sank on April 14, 1912, largely due to the weather in 1910 and 1911. The warmest March on record in the US occurred in March 1910
This occurred shortly before Earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet
Mar 13, 1910, page 13 – The Baltimore Sun at Newspapers.com
Mar 19, 1910, page 13 – The Ottawa Journal at Newspapers.com
The US went into severe drought for seventeen months.
This led to the largest wildfire in US history during August 1910
“On August 20 hurricane-force winds swept through the region and fanned embers and low flames back to life all across the Northern Rockies. There was no stopping or containing the fire; one could only hope to avoid it. Trains raced to evacuate towns just ahead of the flames. Forester Edward G. Stahl recalled that flames hundreds of feet high were “fanned by a tornadic wind so violent that the flames flattened out ahead, swooping to earth in great darting curves, truly a veritable red demon from hell.” In the same instant that towns and timber alike perished, heroes were made, legends were born, and history changed forever.”
The 1910 Fires – Forest History Society
There was a worldwide heatwave in 1911 which led to unprecedented Arctic melting, Temperatures in Greenland reached 94F, and an “enormous crop” of icebergs were set adrift.
Sep 17, 1911, page 6 – The Atlanta Constitution at Newspapers.com
Glaciers were disappearing in Switzerland.
18 May 1911 – GRAVE NEWS ABOUT GLACIERS. – Trove
40,000 people in France died from the heat
In 1911, Paris was already suffocating under the heatwave – Le Parisien
New England had their worst heatwave.
Jul 05, 1911, page 1 – The Boston Globe at Newspapers.com
July 4, 1911 was hottest on record in the US.
There were many record warm days and nights during 1911
In 1912, the sinking of the Titanic was blamed on excess icebergs caused by the warm weather of the previous two years.
May 08, 1912, page 9 – Courier-Post at Newspapers.com
TimesMachine: May 5, 1912 – NYTimes.com
Wallace, ID may be the center of the universe, but it is also a center for destruction.
The town was also destroyed in 1997 by the eruption of Dante’s Peak.
The last graph shows a hockey stick. I believe Tony discussed this before, but it is interesting. Instrumental data begins in earnest around 1900, where it immediately shoots upward from the inferred temperatures of the previous 900 years that are based upon tree rings, ice cores, and other physical data. They don’t tell us how they weigh each of those sources ( e.g. 30% tree rings, 60% ice cores, or what). Also the standard deviation prior to 1600 was huge, which implies to me that the data they used had a wide range of variation. It’s tighter from 1600-1900. All in all, I wonder if we really did have a significant change in 1900 or whether it is that the reconstruction, particularly before 1600 is misleading.
Considering that there was a huge heatwave that started in the 1870ies and killed millions of people,especially in Asia,
the significant change must have either started as a downward trend around 1900
or started 3 decades earlier.
It is also interessting that
a)the Medieval Warm Period is not really there (also no real downward trend in 1250)
and
b)that the hockey stick pretty much started when real data slowly started becoming available which reminds me of the quote of Ridd.
“We never had problems with the Riffs until we started observing them”