LOGBOOKS from a 1860s warship are being used to build a picture of how Earth’s climate has changed since pre-industrial times.
The books include air temperature and weather observations made from the crew on HMS Warrior.
The paper records will now be digitised by citizen scientists in a new Weather Rescue at Sea project launched today by scientists at the University of Reading.
The 1860s and 1870s temperature data from the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans will expand existing long-term climate records.
This will allow computer analysis to improve comparisons between the climate now and before the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century.
Professor Ed Hawkins, an NCAS climate scientist at the university, is co-leading the project with NCAS research scientist Praveen Teleti .
“The records we need to rescue are among the very earliest coordinated weather measurements and would have been penned by hand by sailors, yet they are no less valuable now in the age of supercomputers to understanding climate change,” Professor Hawkins said.
HMS Warrior was a 40-gun, steam-powered armoured frigate. It was built around 1860 at the start of an arms race between the UK and France that triggered a rapid advance in the design of naval ships. It is now a tourist attraction as a museum ship in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
Weather Rescue at Sea volunteers will also explore records from ships involved in the Shimonoseki Campaign of 1863 to 1864.
This saw naval forces from Great Britain, the Netherlands and the United States engage in a series of battles with Japanese ships over control the Shimonoseki Strait — a strategic passage for trade in Japanese waters.
It is hoped the records rescued from the logbooks will help fill in gaps in 19th century temperature records, which are currently relatively poor for the 1860s and 1870s compared to other decades since 1850.
The project is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and follows previous citizen science projects led by Professor Hawkins.
These have included digitising archived weather data from a remote Victorian weather station on Ben Nevis in Scotland.
To sign up to join the project, visit: rdg.ac/seaweather
