Extracting global maritime weather data from New England whaling and Portuguese Navy logbooks

Abstract

In climate research, long datasets that describe weather conditions extending back in time to the pre– or early industrial age are invaluable. Such data helps scientists to establish a historical base-line for weather and climate variability, against which to measure changes over time, better understand anthropogenic departures, and illuminate interactions between different components of the climate system. To provide such information, a maritime historian and an oceanographer have combined their skill sets to expand the body of weather knowledge for some of the most remote regions on the planet. A rich trove of maritime weather information is contained in the vast repositories of ships’ logbooks from New England whaling and Portuguese Navy vessels, in which officers recorded weather information multiple times each day over the course of their voyages. Researchers are building a database to extract centuries-old weather information from approximately 4,200 North American whaling and 2,200 Portuguese Navy logbooks dating to the middle eighteenth century.