Manhattan's on a hot streak - and we are not just talking basketball, football, National Bio and Agro Defense Facility (NBAF), the cool vet school, nearby Ft. Riley, or any of the other achievements that the proud metropolis of Manhattan, Kansas, is well known for.

Manhattan's new claim to fame: The longest unbroken daily temperature record yet documented, corrected, and verified in the Americas.

The record of 65,987 total daily temperature observations reliably extends from 1855 to 2009, although documentation reaches back as far as 1828. Researchers from the University of Arkansas reconstructed this record by poring over handwritten documents from the U.S. Army Surgeon General and other sources. In order to weed out anomalies, they verified the results against seven historical and four modern temperature measuring stations in Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma.

Their discovery - since 1855, Manhattan has experienced significant warming during all seasons, plus an increased frequency in both winter cold waves and summer heat waves. The overall mean temperature has warmed by 1.57 degrees Celsius.

Why is this consecutive temperature record so important? A few reasons.

The Great Plains has enormous climate variability (as we all know). A longterm temperature record helps capture a baseline for these cycles.

This baseline helps researchers sort out increases in climate variability from natural changes in climate over time. Global warming makes natural climate variability more extreme. (It's just like when you have even a slight fever - you feel chills, then hot, then chills. Same thing.)

Specifically, this longterm temperature record comes from the heart of rural America - Manhattan is the center of America's breadbasket. Climate variability matters to agriculture. What better location to study its impact?

This sort of temperature record is rare. Back in 1855, most of the nation's current agricultural lands were still the Wild West - that was before the Civil War, the Homestead Act, all of that. Accurate temperature readings from that era are very hard to come by.

Want to know more about climate change in Kansas? Check out this report from KU researchers - full report, and executive summary.

(Thanks to Climateer for tracking the Manhattan study down for me, too!)