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Great Paintings
Tue Aug 23, 2005
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Since climatological data records date back, at most, a couple centuries, climatologists have had to search for evidence of past climate conditions using surrogate indicators such as tree rings and ice cores.
Hi, I’m Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook’s weekly Climate Change series.
Perhaps the most inventive such search took place in the art galleries of the United States and Europe in 1967.
That year, Professor Hans Neuberger of Penn State University scrutinized over 12,000 paintings created between 1400 and 1967 for their meteorological content.
Neuberger felt that artists recorded a changing European climate on their canvases. By observing how the artists had rendered the skies, he hoped to construct a picture of the climate trends over the centuries.
For each painting, Neuberger recorded the date and location and also estimated the visibility distance, the cloudiness, and the blueness intensity of painted skies.
He also collected European harvest data and available weather records. Since most measured weather data dates only from the mid-19th century, he selected from 1850 to 1967 as a test period to compare sky renditions to actual data in hopes of extrapolating those findings to earlier paintings.
Neuberger found strong correlations between observed weather and painted weather for the test period, which gave him confidence to compare paintings across the centuries.
From his study, he discerned a clear shift in sky character from the warm Medieval Climate Optimum to the Little Ice Age. Before 1550 painted skies were much bluer or more haze-free. But during the Little Ice Age he found a tendency toward cloudiness and darkness that reversed after 1850, the approximate end of the Little Ice Age.
Thanks to our contributing writer, meteorologist Keith Heidorn. The Weather Notebook is funded by Subaru of America. Help for our Climate Change Series comes from Environmental Defense.
Today's Links
Paintings provide precise weather history
http://www.cavalierdaily.com/CVArticle.asp?ID=475&pid=460
Our Changing Climate As Mirrored In Paintings From The Past
http://www.morgenwelt.de/futureframe/000221-climatepaintings.htm
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