Finished! Looks like this project is out of data at the moment!
Southern Weather Discovery Phase II - The Week it Snowed Everywhere!
Data keying for this phase is completed - thanks to all our wonderful volunteers for their help!!!
This phase of Southern Weather Discovery has some extra support from a Microsoft AI for Earth grant. |
"The Week it Snowed Everywhere" dataset will help us improve understanding of extreme weather events within the context of long-term climate change. |
Capture old weather data from New Zealand, the Southern Ocean and Antarctica to help us understand the past and prepare for the future
Learn moreOur next phase of SWD work is focused on "The Week it Snowed Everywhere" - an extreme snowfall event during the winter of 1939 that reached all the way up to the subtropical far north of New Zealand.
We need your help to get massive amounts of old weather information off the page and Autumn 1939 will help to set the scene for what happened during the Winter of 1939. Choose your climate variable from autumn of 1939 to enter - will it be air pressure, temperature or wind?
Zooniverse Talk
Chat with the research team and other volunteers!
Southern Weather Discovery Statistics
View more statsKeep track of the progress you and your fellow volunteers have made on this project.
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By the numbers
Message from the researcher
With your help we will be able to understand more about New Zealand's most severe snow event from the 20th century!
Southern Weather DiscoveryAbout Southern Weather Discovery
Southern Weather Discovery (SWD) had a hugely successful first phase
Thanks to all of our volunteers for their tremendous help!
Here's what we succeeded in achieving in SWD Phase I: |
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- 1,510 unique log book images supplied data that we captured. This actually represents about 1-2% of the resource that we obtained in our first phase of research, so there is still a long way to go! |
- 15,524 total segments of log books were keyed by SWD volunteers, |
- 93,851 unique observations related to sub-daily pressure were captured (uncorrected barometer, attached thermometer, and corrected barometer) |
- 54,312 unique observations of air temperature and sea surface temperature |
- 81% of log segments with pressure observations were comprehensively passed and retired |
- 90% of individual pressure observations passed with a 60% or greater consensus among citizen scientists who keyed the data (minimum no. of entries = 5 people) |
- 56% of log segments with temperature observations were comprehensively passed and retired |
- 67% of individual temperature observations passed with a 60% or greater consensus among citizen scientists who keyed the data (minimum no. of entries = 5 people) |
Why we are running Week it Snowed Everywhere: |
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This short project on "Week it Snowed Everywhere" is targeting improvements to SWD for streamlining replicated data keying and retrieval of weather observations using citizen science. See the video above, which tells a bit about this effort. |
Once that's done, we will consolidate lessons learned, and be able to upload many more data forms for the 19th and 20th Century. There are going to be huge benefits for climate science and weather reconstructions from the tens to hundreds of thousands of images that we hope you will help us obtain. |
A serendipitous outcome of continuing the data capture using SWD will see a new training library built that can improve AI techniques for scientific data transcription. |
Project Background: |
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The data rescue we are undertaking here is part of an initiative called ACRE Antarctica, and it is led by NIWA scientists from New Zealand. Initial support for setting up Southern Weather Discovery came from Deep South National Science Challenge. |
Past weather observations from historic sources like meteorological stations ship log books and Antarctic explorations are critical for understanding Southern Hemisphere weather and climate. |
We will mine all of those resources for weather data and feed observations into global reanalyses - daily weather reconstructions covering the Earth - extending back into the 1800s. This will give us better daily weather animations and a longer term perspective of events that occurred in the past. It will also help us understand how the weather generated from Antarctica and the Southern Ocean impacts on New Zealand. |
Our work consists of identifying data resources, digital scanning, keying data, quality control, and archiving observations. |
The team will examine New Zealand's atmospheric and oceanic connections to the Deep South (i.e. Antarctica), examine daily weather pattern trends and history of climate modes, and establish more accurate pre-industrial conditions that future climate patterns can be compared to. |
Click below to watch the Southern Weather Discovery video and learn more about the project! |
