Abstract
AbstractHistorical ship logbooks provide vital historic meteorological observations in the Southern Ocean, one of the largest climate‐data deficient regions on the Earth. Christian Salvesen Whaling Company logbooks from whaling ships operating in the Southern Ocean, starting from the 1930s through the 1950s, are examined. Meteorological information contained in these logbooks has been extracted to produce a historical climate dataset. We discuss various instructions recommended by the British Admiralty to observe and record weather conditions on‐board whaling ships. Statistical tests were used to flag erroneous values and corrections were made using neighbouring values. Meteorological parameters such as air pressure, air and sea temperature and wind force on the Beaufort scale were standardized, converting imperial to metric units. The data were structured according to the internationally accepted International Maritime Meteorological Archive format, which includes the most commonly reported meteorological variables, including the time, location and ship‐related meta‐data. Hence, a readily accessible, error‐corrected and standardized historical climate dataset of the Weddell Sea sector of the Southern Ocean is presented.Open Practices This article has earned an Open Data badge for making publicly available the digitally‐shareable data necessary to reproduce the reported results. The data is available at https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.31530. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki.
Highlights
The Southern Ocean is the least documented climatic region of the globe (Jones et al, 2016)
The logbooks have been digitalized into 2,700 images by the RECLAIM project and were made available for this study (Wilkinson, 2016a). These logbooks are from whaling expeditions undertaken during 1930s and 1950s, and we use these logbook images to extract meteorological observations to construct a climate dataset of the Southern Ocean
Each record contains a number of positional, meteorological and meta‐data parameters found in the Christian Salvesen Co. whaling logbooks of the 1930s and 1950s
Summary
The Southern Ocean is the least documented climatic region of the globe (Jones et al, 2016). KEYWORDS Antarctica, data rescue, historical climate observations, Southern Ocean, whaling We have chosen to extract and assimilate a large number of observations from commercial whaling ships to create a historical meteorological dataset.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
