Gee, where have we seen this pioneered for gathering data before? Of course, Professor Stott saw fit to not invite Dr. Roger Pielke Sr., myself or anyone who has any experience with this sort of thing to the Exeter meeting of surfacetemperatures.org. But as they say, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”.
Your chance to help chart past climate
12 October 2010
Voyages of World War One Royal Navy warships are being used to help scientists understand the climate of the past and unearth new historical information, with help from the public.
Visitors to the website OldWeather.org, which launches today, are being invited to input weather observations of the routes taken by any of 280 Royal Navy ships. Once on the website, volunteers will be asked to transcribe information from the digital copies of historical logbooks, making notes of weather and any interesting events.
Dr Peter Stott, Head of Climate Monitoring and Attribution at the Met Office, said: “Historical weather data is vital because it allows us to test our models of the Earth’s climate: if we can correctly account for what the weather was doing in the past, then we can have more confidence in our predictions of the future. Unfortunately, the historical record is full of gaps, particularly from before 1920, and at sea, so this project is invaluable.”
Dr Chris Lintott of Oxford University, one of the team behind the OldWeather.org project added: “These naval logbooks contain an amazing treasure trove of information, but because the entries are handwritten they are incredibly difficult for a computer to read. By getting an army of online human volunteers to retrace these voyages and transcribe the information recorded by British sailors we can relive both the climate of the past and key moments in naval history.”
OldWeather.org forms a key part of the International ACRE Project, which is recovering past weather and climate data from around the world and bringing them into widespread use. Met Office Hadley Centre scientist Dr Rob Allan, the ACRE project leader said: “Reconstructing past weather from these historical documents will help further our knowledge of weather patterns and climatic changes.”
Most of the data about past climate comes from land-based weather monitoring stations which have been systematically recording data for over 150 years. The weather information from the ships at OldWeather.org, which spans the period 1905–1929, effectively extends this land-based network to 280 seaborne weather stations traversing the world’s oceans.
The weather records digitised by Old Weather will be added to the International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set, and will be freely available for all uses.
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h/t to WUWT reader DavidS
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James Sexton says
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What a novel idea, using anecdotal historical evidence to come to a better understanding of our climate.
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I have an idea in the back of my mind that it’s not a novel idea, although the cloud sourcing approach applied to this particular problem may be.
Being sarcastic and continually flogging the idea that you are smart and they are stupid doesn’t impress. Sorry.
vukcevic says:
October 16, 2010 at 1:00 am
Then there is another problem, the science establishment’s means of publishing are not easily accessible to the outsiders.
This is simply not true. The ‘obstacle’ is called quality, that is: the paper must satisfy a set of requirements in that department. Include description of the data, its uncertainty and limitations. The method of analysis should be set out clearly, including statistical significance, if any. If possible, the physical mechanism should be described. Its viability in terms of energy should be discussed. Reference to other works relevant to the paper should be included. In short, there is homework to be done. This is where you fall short.
It appears I am on stage two, might have to wait for long time if ever for the third stage, but signs are promising.
The easiest one to fool is yourself.
Leif Svalgaard says:
October 16, 2010 at 6:47 am
The easiest one to fool is yourself.
Hi Leif! Yes! Indeed. AGW might become the best example of (self) delusion in science. It is not so common that scientists deliberately are cheating – “religious and other emotional convictions drive scientists, despite what they may think their motivations are”.
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/805-agw-revisited.html
If you have time read this article Leif:
http://www.geoportalen.no/bjorkum/klimaforskningen/
Men formen den vitenskapelige debatten har hatt de siste ti årene, og måten man har forholdt seg til alternative forklaringer på, og ikke minst samrøret mellom politikk og forskning, gjør at vi kan være vitne til vitenskapshistoriens største kollektive (selv)bedrag.
Surely both sides in the debate are fooling themselves – we are in the early beginning of climate science with trial and error and random results.
Invariant says:
October 16, 2010 at 7:35 am
You may enjoy this link: http://www.leif.org/EOS/KlimaTankekors.pdf
Invariant says:
October 16, 2010 at 7:35 am
Re: The easiest one to fool is yourself.
But the experts can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones they concentrate on, the others they fight tooth and nail. I often fool myself with one thing or another, but I am not so often fooled by others. Have you ever heard of that notorious double agent the bird called cuckoo. Well, I am paid by AGW lobby to present all sorts of ‘ridiculous theories’, so the CO2 can have free run.
Are you fooled?
Of course not.
Merits a thought!
Anthony
In the earlier old link to Cooks logs (2008) I notice you had put a comment about storms in cold periods.
I have been researching this area for some time with a view to a possible article but there is no doubt that there are many more examples of life threatening and violent storms in cold periods than there are in warm periods.
Many of these events were collected in Hubert Lambs classic book ‘Historc storms of the North Sea, British Isles and Northwest Europe. ISBN 0-521-61931-9.
Some of it is online;
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=P4n1z9rOh5MC&pg=PA44&lpg=PA44&dq=jet+stream+and+H+Lamb&source=bl&ots=esy1NPuOVK&sig=8znmDQOYeh3A9vo_nFwgbhJ9TdM&hl=en&ei=5erhSszZJMarjAffzsDCAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CA4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Many other authors document these storms as well but Lamb does it very succinctly. I can see no evidence that ‘warm’ weather has the most violent storms.
However, perhaps someone here can point me to a peer reviewed article that proves the warm weather equals more storms hypothesis?
tonyb
vukcevic says:
October 16, 2010 at 10:01 am
But the experts can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones they concentrate on, the others they fight tooth and nail.
What kind of silly paranoid nonsense is that?
Phil’s Dad says:
October 15, 2010 at 9:38 am
Could I suggest that anyone who gets involved in this make their findings public so that any “adjustments” to the collated result can be spotted?
So you’re having doubts too, like me. It’s going to be hard to justify adjustments on this one though because so many public eyes will be on it. The adjustments that we are accustomed to in ‘global warming’ have been done behind closed doors, and even then they were noticeable. 🙂
Leif Svalgaard says:
October 16, 2010 at 8:21 am
You may enjoy this link: http://www.leif.org/EOS/KlimaTankekors.pdf
Morsomt.
I find it hard to believe that these 24 years of ships’ logs are “it”. I’m no scholar of seagoing records, but I know that logbooks have been kept since before the spice trade started taking British, Dutch, Spanish and Portugese ships around the world, in the depths of the Little Ice Age.
Accurate temperature readings may not be found that far back, but anecdotal information from which qualitative data may be inferred will be present throughout, as mariners have always been keen observers of such things, for upon such information they staked their own survival.
Giles Milton had little difficulty accessing reams of penetrating insights from ships logs for his wonderful book (highly recommended reading!) about the British spice traders, Nathaniel’s Nutmeg. I doubt much large-scale crowdsourcing is required here — what they need is a few dozen dedicated and patient volunteer transcribers for the project they have begun. They may need a couple of hundred to cover all of british maritime records back to 1500. And perhaps a small crowd of about the same size for Dutch, Portugese and Spanish logs.
Hi, how can I contact you? Do you have an email, a facebook profile or something? I need to ask you something, if I may. thanks. in the meantime, have a nice day. -instantempo
[Reply: The best place to post this question is in Tips & Notes. ~dbs, mod.]