Dealing with the deluge of historical weather data: the example of the TEMPEST database

Abstract

People have long been interested in the history of weather, particularly extremes, and chronologies of past events drawing on information from written records have been compiled and published throughout history. In recent years, concern over current and future weather and climate has triggered a new level of interest in past weather events and their impacts. This interest, alongside the development of digital humanities research methods, has resulted in a rapid growth in the number of online databases relating to historic weather and climate around the world. This paper documents the design, creation and content of one such database, TEMPEST, an online repository for extreme weather history in the UK. TEMPEST has been created as the major output of the AHRC funded project 'Spaces of Experience and Horizons of Expectation: The Implications of Extreme Weather in the UK, Past, Present and Future' (2013-2017). Unlike the majority of existing databases that rely on published materials, TEMPEST's records are drawn from primary research into original documentary sources held in archives around the UK. The c. 18,000 records that TEMPEST currently contains offer personalised and geo-referenced insights into the relationship between society and extreme weather in the UK spanning a period of over 400 years. In this paper we outline potential applications for TEMPEST and suggest directions for future research and resources in historical weather. We also consider broader issues for the digital humanities relating to the storage, archiving, ownership, and usage of data and the need to ensure connectivity between complementary datasets.

Dry weather fears of Britain’s early ‘industrial’ canal network

“…In both 6-and 12-month SPI series for Chatsworth, the year 1785 stands out as a particularly severe drought, with peak severity occurring in May 1785 (− 4.39) and July 1785 (− 3.72) in the 6-and 12-month SPIs respectively. Corroboratory archival evidence supports this, with several accounts in the TEMPEST database (Veale et al 2017) documenting the impacts of the severe drought of 1785 regionally and nationally. Estate correspondence from Husbands Bosworth in Leicestershire (~90 km to the south), talks of the 'calamitous season', with land agents (estate managers) writing in July 1785 noting that 'by reason of an extraordinary drought, the graziers are in the greatest distress' (LLRRO DG39/708) and also commenting on a fire, which spread rapidly because of the dryness, requiring a house to be pulled down to halt its progress (LLRRO DG39/708).…”

“…Letters written between 1797 and 1801, preserved in the letter book of civil engineer John Rennie (1761-1821), were another key archival source (ICE REN/RB/02). The TEMPEST database was searched for corroboratory archival evidence (Veale et al 2017). In order to complement the rainfall series from Chatsworth, the material selected for this paper relates mostly to the Trent and Mersey Canal, although impacts were felt across the country and canals elsewhere faced similar problems.…”

Improving the understanding of flood risk in the Alsatian region by knowledge capitalization: the ORRION participative observatory

“…Even more simply, it is sometimes deemed sufficient to set up communication strategies to inform the public or raise public awareness of the risks involved (e.g. Kuhlicke et al, 2016) or to help the public accept the management strategies defined by the experts (Hubert and De Vanssay, 2005;Vinet, 2010). Finally, when a participative approach is adopted, it usually consists in summing up oral memory or, more generally, in exploiting information produced by the public in a one-way movement in order to improve the mapping of a phenomenon or crisis management (e.g.…”

“…Giacona et al, 2017), even in the case of hydrological risks (e.g. Guzzetti and Tonelli, 2004;Brázdil et al, 2006;Hilker et al, 2009;Martin, 2010;Wetter et al, 2011;Lang et al, 2012;Kjeldsen et al, 2014;Veale et al, 2017).…”

Synthetic Weather Diaries: Concept and Application to Swiss Weather in 1816

“…In this situation, historical instrumental data -but also documentary weather data -become once again valuable for science (Allan et al, 2011). Based on digitised historical instrumental data, model chains can be built (e.g., numerically simulating the damage of past storm or flood events, see Stucki et al, 2015Stucki et al, , 2018 and analysed together with historical sources (e.g., Allan et al, 2016;Veale et al, 2017).…”