Meteorological observations for Eversleigh Station, near Armidale, New South Wales, Australia: 1877–1922

Abstract

Historical weather observations on the daily scale are vital for the improvement of reanalysis products and the analysis of long‐term variability of extreme events. While daily datasets extend for several centuries in parts of the Northern Hemisphere, the majority of historical data for the Southern Hemisphere are monthly averages or totals. In this paper, we describe a newly recovered dataset of ten daily meteorological variables for 1877 to 1922 from Eversleigh, a property in the New England region of New South Wales in Australia. Here, we present the full process of data rescue, from digitization to quality control and an assessment of homogeneity. We show that the majority of variables were recorded to a high standard and that the data are of general use for climate analysis. Forty years of daily temperature, cloud cover, wind, and pressure observations are now available for the New England Plateau, offering data that are more complete than any other records for the region in the Australian Bureau of Meteorology dataset. The Eversleigh dataset now provides an opportunity to gain more insight into the 19th century weather and climate of eastern Australia during a time of large interannual climate variability before the dominant impact of an anthropogenic warming signal.

Meteorological data rescue: Citizen science lessons learned from Southern Weather Discovery

“…In this descriptor article, we summarize our experiences from Southern Weather Discovery (SWD) ( www.southernweatherdiscovery.org ), a citizen science initiative hosted on the Zooniverse web platform, to show how southern hemisphere meteorological time series have been generated and quality controlled from historical ship logbooks. This case study builds on prior work that has documented preparation of historical documents and transcription tactics, 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 but also adds detail by explaining key elements of publicity and a media strategy plan that engendered public support for meteorological data rescue. We provide a stepwise account of our methods, highlighting some successes and pitfalls, that other researchers may benefit from to improve citizen science data rescue efforts for the geosciences.…”