Scour Ancient Navy Logs for Modern Climate Models

By Clark Boyd

It might be hard to believe, but this page from an old British Royal Navy logbook contains the kind of raw data that climate scientists crave. See the wind, barometric pressure and temperature readings there in the middle of the page ?

That's exactly the kind of historical data that scientists need to put into their climate modeling software in an effort to get a better grip on what the earth's weather was in the past, why it is the way it is today, and what it might do tomorrow. And now, scientists are asking for your help in unlocking all these potential climate clues.

It's a project called Oldweather.org, and it's a collaboration between Britain's Meteorological Office and the University of Oxford folks behind such other "citizen science" projects as Galaxy Zoo and Moon Zoo. A word of warning: this isn't just a piece of software you download onto your computer. You have to actively go and scour the digitized versions of these old logbooks and record the data online.

Why? Because handwriting recognition software just isn't good enough yet to do it automatically.

Now, why logbooks ? Well, they are a treasure trove of information. Every Royal Navy ship was required to keep a daily log, and six times a day -- no matter what was happening -- someone had to note the required weather information.

Oxford's Chris Lintott puts it this way: "Every four hours, no matter what else was going on, whether they were in battle, whether they were busy dealing with horrible weather conditions, they would record the temperature, the pressures, and make a note of the weather."

Considering that Royal Navy ships have been doing this for centuries, you can imagine that's a LOT of data. The Old Weather project has started with 280 ships from around the World War I era, but there are logbooks that go back into the 18th and 17th centuries.

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