Formalizing Trust in Historical Weather Data

Abstract

Historical instrumental weather observations are vital to understanding past, present, and future climate variability and change. However, the quantity of historical weather observations to be rescued globally far exceeds the resources available to do the rescuing. Which observations should be prioritized? Here we formalize guidelines help make decision on rescuing historical data. Rather than wait until resource-intensive digitization is done to assess the data’s value, insights can be gleaned from the context in which the observations were made and the history of the observers. Further insights can be gained from the transcription platforms used and the transcribers involved in the data rescue process, without which even the best historical observations can be mishandled. We use the concept of trust to help integrate and formalize the guidelines across the lifecycle of data rescue, from the original observation source to the transcribed data element. Five cases of citizen science-based historical data rescue, two from Canada and three from Australia, guide us in constructing a trust checklist. The checklist assembles information from the original observers and their observations to the current transcribers and transcription approaches they use. Nineteen elements are generated to help future data rescue projects answer the question of whether resources should be devoted to rescuing historical meteorological material under consideration.

New perspectives on historical climatology

“…The challenge of assembling historical climate databases have even been the focus of a first “ethnographic” study of historical climatology research teams (Decker, 2018). At the time of writing, the first projects were underway to compile and analyze a global inventory of historical documentary evidence (Burgdorf, 2022) and to formalize standards for prioritizing “data rescue” and digitization projects of old weather records as well as assessing trust in the resulting databases (Sieber et al, 2022).…”

The climate in Poland (Central Europe) in the first half of the last millennium, revisited

“…Knowledge about weather and climate in the pre-instrumental period, particularly for the last millennium, is fundamental and necessary to identify past and potential future drivers of climate change (Brönnimann et al, 2019;Brönnimann, 2022;Sieber et al, 2022). The traditional scheme of climate changes in this time that was proposed by Lamb (1965Lamb ( , 1977Lamb ( , 1984, in particular the occurrence of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP, recently called also the Medieval Climate Anomaly, MCA), was recently questioned on a global scale (e.g., Hughes and Diaz, 1994;Brázdil et al, 2005;Diaz et al, 2011); nonetheless, it is still valid for central and western Europe and some other areas mainly in the Northern Hemisphere (Mann et al 2009).…”