On the subject of past records, I don't have a bunch of links handy or anything but I watched the videos posted earlier in this thread and if you skip to 2:40 in this video he goes over past graphs of temperate until about 5:20 and then in the second video he covers the rate of change as well starting at about 1:30 and going until about 4:15.
You can probably e-mail him if you want the sources for his data.
edit: PS - I'm going to bed~








