Digitizing observations from the Met Office Daily Weather Reports for 1900–1910 using citizen scientist volunteers

Philip M Craig,Ed Hawkins

doi:10.1002/gdj3.93

Abstract

AbstractWe describe the digitization of 1.8 million sub‐daily and daily weather observations which were recorded in the UK Met Office Daily Weather Reports during the 1900–1910 period. The data were rescued from scanned images of the original documents by 2,148 volunteer citizen scientists using the weatherrescue.org website. The rescued observations include dry and wet bulb temperatures, daily maximum and minimum temperatures, daily rainfall amounts and sub‐daily sea‐level pressure from 72 different locations across western Europe. These observations will be used to fill gaps in existing pressure, temperature and rainfall records and are one of the largest recoveries of weather data by citizen scientists. The value of these additional observations is highlighted by comparing the pressure observations to the Twentieth Century Reanalysis version 3 ensemble for some specific case studies.

Highlights

We describe the digitization of 1.8 million sub-daily and daily weather observations which were recorded in the UK Met Office Daily Weather Reports during the 1900–1910 period
In September 1860, the UK Met Office, under the direction of Admiral Robert FitzRoy, began publishing Daily Weather Reports (DWRs) which consisted of tabulated weather observations from stations around Great Britain and Ireland (GBI)
We describe the dataset of pressure, temperature and rainfall observations recovered from the 1900–1910 DWRs with a citizen science project

Summary

| INTRODUCTION

In September 1860, the UK Met Office ( known as the Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade), under the direction of Admiral Robert FitzRoy, began publishing Daily Weather Reports (DWRs) which consisted of tabulated weather observations from stations around Great Britain and Ireland (GBI). Of the many British and Northern Irish stations in the 1900–1910 DWRs, only four have temperature or rainfall data in MIDAS for this time period. We describe the dataset of pressure, temperature and rainfall observations recovered from the 1900–1910 DWRs with a citizen science project. Various documents in the NMLA (summarized in Table 1) provide latitude and longitude coordinates and elevations of the stations. The elevations refer to the height of the rain gauge above sea level in metres

| Method of data collection

CONCLUSIONS