| URL | www.oldweather.org |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | No |
| Type of site | Volunteer Scientific Project |
| Registration | Yes |
| Available language(s) | English |
| Owner | Zooniverse |
| Created by | Zooniverse |
| Launched | 12 October 2010 |
| Current status | active |
Old Weather is an online weather data project that invites members of the public to assist in digitising weather observations recorded in Royal Navy log books during the early twentieth century. Earlier material may be incorporated in future. It is an example of citizen science that enlists members of the public to help in scientific research. It contributes to ACRE.
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The project was inspired by Galaxy Zoo, a part of the Zooniverse, where the public was asked to classify the images of over 60,000,000 galaxies. Old Weather is a collaboration between researchers at many institutions, including the University of Oxford, Oxford Martin School, the International Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth, Naval-History.Net of Penarth, JISC which encourages UK colleges and universities in the innovative use of digital technologies, the National Maritime Museum at Maritime Greenwich, London, and the UK National Archives, Kew, London.
Computer programs have proved unable to read handwriting reliably. It is a task much better performed by the human brain and the results transferred to a digital form.
No knowledge of meteorology or the Royal Navy is required to take part in Old Weather. In the site's tutorial, would-be volunteers are shown how to digitise a weather record either by reading written instructions or by watching short videos. Further instructions on how to transcribe the logs are available on the associated Old Weather forum.
It is intended that the pages of the logs are digitised by at least three people. The transcriptions will be used to make climate model projections and an improved database of weather extremes.
The raw materials of the project are handwritten Royal Navy log books which have been scanned page by page.
The digitiser is assigned to a ship (or is able to choose one). From the log books, on a separate page for each day, the digitiser notes: date, location (or voyage) and the individual watchkeeper's weather records, usually consisting of wind direction, strength, cloud cover or weather conditions, barometric pressure and between two and four temperature observations. Interesting events or sightings of other ships or landmarks may also be recorded.
Weather readings were usually made four hourly; a seventh observation was sometimes made when ships were at sea. Some ships made hourly weather readings and half-hourly readings were sometimes recorded during particularly bad weather. At sea, sun sights were taken to record latitude and longitude with reference to the radio time signal.
The project is broken down into a number of phases and details have been published for the first two. Phase II will start when Phase I is complete.
As of 2 December 2011[update], 98% of the logs — 741,370 pages — of this phase have been digitised fully. The logs of 221 ships are complete.
Phase II will consist of Royal Navy logs from a similar time to those digitised in Phase I. This is the only definite plan at this time. It is hoped that Phase III will consist of US logs and Phase IV will consist of Arctic logs.[1]
Initial results of Phase I will be published after data collection is complete and conclusions can be made.
Indeed the readings are still being assessed at a very broad level. But the distribution of temperature by latitude and wind force by latitude have been plotted for the 120,000 results for which 3 readings have been taken.[2]
Because climate change [3] is a very political issue, interested parties could try to corrupt the data by, say, entering temperature figures that are too high or too low. Because three sets of records for each data point will be entered, any set from a digitiser showing a marked deviation from the other records should be easily checkable and eliminated. Large-scale fraud is unlikely because the data is entered one log page at a time, and so is immune to a spam type of attack. Collaborative projects such as Linux and Wikipedia have for the most part been able to rely on the transparent honesty of those taking part.
Accidental errors, such as reading '4's for '7's are possible, but often context will sort this out. A temperature of 40°F is unlikely to be correct for a latitude in the tropics and may safely be assumed to be 70°F. During the period, the Royal Navy used Fahrenheit.