Weather Rescue at Sea: Recovering Historical Weather Observations From 19th Century British Naval Ships

Abstract

Ship logbooks represent a critical source of historical meteorological data, providing valuable observations of barometric pressure, air temperature, sea surface temperature, wind force and direction, and other variables. Substantial quantities of these records are unavailable to climate science as they have not yet been transcribed. We present ‘Weather Rescue at Sea’, a citizen-science project which transcribed millions of weather observations contained in 19th Century UK Royal Navy ship logbooks. We describe the logbook structure and weather observation-taking instructions and discuss significant challenges with the translation of handwritten text into accurate data due to errors arising from ambiguous handwriting, historical terminology, and inconsistent metadata. We present the dataset and explore its spatio-temporal characteristics. The corrected and quality-assured datasets will enhance climate reanalyses and other historical reconstructions of the pre- and early industrial climate by providing more input meteorological data. Furthermore, we highlight emerging tools, such as AI-driven transcription correction, and outline remaining challenges in fully leveraging these historical records to advance climate science.