Guest rooms at the massive Einsiedeln Monastery are small, plain and hot.

The Baroque style cathedral on the other hand is not. It is four stories high with paintings, sculptures and gold trim covering all the wall space. And at the beginning of December, it is cold.

But that is life at Einsiedeln, a small town about 50 kilometers east of Lucerne.

It has been that way for hundreds of years and there’s proof.

ANDREAS MEYERHANS: The first of January 1684. In this morning it was like the night before. It was (foggy) it was very cold. And everything was frozen.

Andreas Meyerhans is the monastery’s chief archivist. He runs an archive that overall is one of the most expansive among Swiss monasteries. He has writings dating back to 937.

And his prize possession is a set of diaries kept by Brother Josef Dietrich from more than 300 years ago. It is written in long flowing script in a mix of German and Latin, and there are very few if any corrections.

Meyerhans says he thinks Dietrich may have written his ideas out before hand then transcribed them to the leather bound diaries.

He detailed everything that was going on around him.

MEYERHAUS: He made, more or less, everyday a note about the weather.

“Global warming is here. It is very clear. I have many indications for this. It is overwhelming.”

So what makes him so popular?

MEYERHAUS: He’s describing it really precisely and you can compare it to today’s phenomenons and this is perhaps the most interesting thing for people who are interested in climate.

With the world taking such an interest in global warming, scientists and climate historians are pining to take a look at such a rich collection.

Meyerhans has 13 big, dictionary-sized volumes of the work in his archives that cover 30 years.

CHRISTIAN PFISTER: Twenty years ago I discovered the Dietrich. It is very clear.

Christian Pfister is a climate historian at the University of Bern.

Years ago, Pfister and his team sniffed out the archives at the monastery and started sifting through them looking for climate clues.

PFISTER: It is not the average weather record that is kept in a monastery. It is unique.

Pfister has been collecting writings from around the world that detail weather patterns.

There are many weather archivists, but Pfister says Dietrich is special because he was so meticulous about the details.

Dietrich even indexed his own writings so people could look up specific terms in the back of each book and then turn to the page it was located.

By piecing together the past, Pfister says, we can learn more about the present.

PFISTER: This allows you to clearly detect the signs that are now obvious that were outside this natural variability of climate.

So our climate now more unpredictable  than hundreds of years ago.

Pfister says no.

He also says there were more natural disasters then than there are now.

But what about global warming?

PFISTER: Global warming is here. It is very clear. I have many indications for this. It is overwhelming.

Brother Konrad is the modern day Dietrich, documenting the weather everyday at the Einsiedeln monastery for the past 40 years.

Of course he uses technology that Dietrich didn’t have: a barometer, a thermometer, a wind gauge.

Konrad agrees that the climate is changing but says there is a higher power involved.

Konrad says people can be diligent when it comes to protecting the environment but he says they should really be diligent of the one being who created the weather and ultimately controls it.

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