Stockholm Historical Weather Observations

Barometer readings in original units

All barometer readings made at the old astronomical observatory have been digitized back to 1 January 1756. The data source for the period 1756-1861 is the hand-written diary of meteorogical observations made at the observatory, which is stored in the archive of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for the period 1756-1858 and in the archive of the SMHI for the period 1859-1861. Data sources for the period 1862-1960 are the printed annual books, published by the SMHI or its predecessors, containing weather observations from all Swedish observing stations.

Digitizing of the individual observational data from 1756-1838 was made by staff at the SMHI in the mid-1990s. Digitizing of data from 1839-1960 was undertaken at Stockholm University in the late 1990s within the European Union FP4 project IMPROVE - Improved Understanding of Past Climatic Variability from Early Daily European Instrumental Sources. Data for 1961 onwards have been made available digitally by the SMHI.

The number of observations each day have changed through time:

  • 1756.01.01-1784.05.31, twice (morning and evening)
  • 1785.06-01-present, three times (morning, noon, evening)

Download data

Observational data from 1961 onwards belong to the SMHI, from which the original data can be obtained. Data used here for 2013 onwards were obtained by downloading from SMHI Öppna Data.

Data files for the two first periods also contain temperatures observed at the barometer.

No air pressure measurements were made at the Stockholm old astronomical observatory between 1939.07.01 and 1950.02.28. Data for this period are taken from Stockholm/Bromma airport, as given in the printed year books.

Reference

Further discussion and details about how the barometer observations were made can be found in the following paper.
  • Moberg A, Bergström H, Ruiz Krigsman J, Svanered O. 2002: Daily air temperature and pressure series for Stockholm (1756-1998). Climatic Change 53: 171-212