FAQ
How do historical ship logbooks help us understand the present and future climate?
Historical logbooks in their own right are very interesting documents containing varied and diverse information about but not limited to trading interests and routes, life on-board influenced by then-contemporary socio-economic-political conditions. These documents are often first hand accounts of many historical events, composed of personal narratives.
But these logbooks also contain many scientific observations as well, especially those deemed useful and feasible on-board a ship. Ships’ crew routinely observed and recorded weather parameters, e.g. air temperature, sea-level pressure, winds throughout their voyages around the globe. Vast collection of these logbooks containing individual observations provide us with an accurate instrumental measure of our past global climate.
Understanding the past climate and comparing it with our present climate can show many insights. Longer we go back in time, the true quantum of change can be measured in the e.g. global temperature since industrial or pre-industrial baseline. This rate of change will show us how much the future global climate will change if current emissions are left unchecked.
So is it a new way to study the past climate? And why are logbooks of this particular time period and kind used in this project?
Data-rescue of historical logbooks has been taking place for decades, but to manually transcribe an almost inexhaustible number of logbooks by individual researchers, would take tens of thousands of human lifetimes. Through Zooniverse’s platform it is now possible to significantly reduce transcription time by sharing the transcription tasks with thousands of eager volunteers. That is why, a number of projects e.g. Weather Rescue at Sea, Old weather - WW2, Rainfall rescue etc. have been hosted on the zooniverse to transcribe historical logbooks and weather records.
There is a scientific interest in understanding the climate of the industrial and pre-industrial era against which our present climate could be measured. Despite earlier and recent data-rescue efforts large gaps in space and time have remained. On closer inspection, in the world's largest observation meteorological dataset, ICOADS version 3, it was found that coverage in the 1860s decade is very poor.
In that view, the UK has a rich sea-faring tradition which goes back to the age of Discovery, and has historical trading links with other nations across the globe. The logbooks deposited at UKHO span nearly every region of the globe. Hence, logbooks archived at UKHO are best suited to produce data with global coverage.
Which is the most useful workflow and how much time does it take to do all workflows?
All workflows shown in this project are equally important to understand ambient weather at the time of observations. Positional and time information is required to place observations in space and time. All workflows are designed in such a way to separate each weather parameter into individual workflows. Once attuned to reading the handwriting and logbook format, each workflow can be completed in less than 2 mins.
What if I can’t read numbers on the logbook page, or the logbook shows numbers which couldn’t possibly be true?
It is normal to be not able to read/understand some numbers in the data columns, use your best guess to input numbers that you think you saw (Hint: Use zoom in/out to make out illegible handwritings). If you think written numbers are exceptionally low or high (see Tutorial section of each workflow for the correct range of values), use your judgement to input correct values. And if “ or DITTO'' symbol is written, copy the previous value into the current one.
I'm a new transcriber, what happens when I make errors, will it ruin the whole dataset?
Don't worry. We all make mistakes even the experienced transcribers do. With a bit of perseverance, handwriting will become more clearer. Each image is classified by 6 different people. Once you and others classify all images, the research team will examine any disagreements in particular images. Then results will be run through a consensus step, to identify the "final version" of the data.
What happens to the transcribed data, how it will be used?
Once the project is complete, raw data after taking the consensus step (but without quality-control) will be made available from a public website. Exact location of the data will be shared nearer the time. Subsequently, the data will be used to generate new estimate of the industrial and pre-industrial era baseline climate. But more generally, this data and data from other historical sources are used to improve the models and reanalysis systems used for climate and weather research, such as NOAA's Twentieth Century Reanalysis, ECMWF's ERA5.
I don't see my question here! Who can I talk to?
You can now start discussion about any topic with other volunteers on Talk. Or talk to our team who will answer any questions you might have about the project as a whole, or specific identification issues. You can also stop by just to chat if you like!