Millions of historical monthly rainfall observations taken in the UK and Ireland rescued by citizen scientists

Hawkins, Ed; Burt, Stephen; McCarthy, Mark; Murphy, Conor; Ross, Catherine E.; Baldock, Mike; Brazier, John; Hersee, Gill; Huntley, J. P.; Meats, Richard; O’Grady, John; Scrimgeour, Ian; Silk, Tim

doi:10.1002/gdj3.157

Cited by 18 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…The underlying UK station data used to produce the gridded dataset is the Met Office Integrated Data Archive System (MIDAS) Land and Marine Surface Stations Database, but this has been supplemented by further recently digitized historic data from multiple sources including British Rainfall and Met Office Monthly and Daily Weather Reports. A major development for this release of the HadUK-Grid dataset is the inclusion of a recently digitized collection of monthly rainfall data from a project called Rainfall Rescue (Hawkins et al, 2022), comprising over 5 million observations from over 6,000 locations across UK and Ireland contained within the "Ten year rainfall" collection (Met Office Digital Library and Archive, 2020). This collection provides an order of magnitude change in the number of stations available prior to 1960, and for the extension of the monthly rainfall series to 1836 (previously 1862).…”

Section: A2 | Haduk-grid Datasetmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The resulting collection of transcribed data then went through an extensive process of consolidation, quality control and verification of metadata such as site locations. These processes are described in detail by Hawkins et al (2022) to which readers should refer for details on the processing the rainfall rescue data. This version of HadUK-Grid has been built with the inclusion of v1.1.0 of the rainfall rescue collection (Hawkins, 2021).…”

Section: A2 | Haduk-grid Datasetmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Details of the datasets used throughout this report and how the various series which are presented are derived are provided in the appendices. A recent development to the underpinning dataset has been the inclusion of several million recently digitized historical monthly rainfall data (Hawkins et al, 2022). These data significantly improve the geographical representation of rainfall before 1960 and allow for the extension of the national series back to 1836.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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State of the UK Climate 2021

Kendon

McCarthy

Jevrejeva

et al. 2022

Intl Journal of Climatology

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INTRODUCTION This report provides a summary of the UK weather and climate through the calendar year 2021, alongside the historical context for a number of essential climate variables. This is the eighth in a series of annual “State of the UK Climate” publications and an update to the 2020 report (Kendon et al., 2021). It provides an accessible, authoritative and up‐to‐date assessment of UK climate trends, variations and extremes based on the most up‐to‐date observational datasets of climate quality. The majority of this report is based on observations of temperature, precipitation, sunshine and wind speed from the UK land weather station network as managed by the Met Office and a number of key partners and co‐operating volunteers. The observations are carefully managed such that they conform to current best‐practice observational standards as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The observations also pass through a range of quality assurance procedures at the Met Office before application for climate monitoring. Time series of near‐coast sea‐surface temperature and sea level are also presented and in addition there is a short section on phenology which provides dates of “first leaf” and “bare tree” indicators for four common shrub or tree species. The reliance of this report on these observations highlights the ongoing need to adequately maintain the observation networks, in particular the UK land weather station network, into the future, to ensure that this UK climate monitoring capability is continued. National and regional statistics in this report are from the HadUK‐Grid dataset which is the principal source of data (Hollis et al., 2019). Temperature and rainfall series from this dataset extend back to 1884 and 1836, respectively. Details of the datasets used throughout this report and how the various series which are presented are derived are provided in the appendices. A recent development to the underpinning dataset has been the inclusion of several million recently digitized historical monthly rainfall data (Hawkins et al., 2022). These data significantly improve the geographical representation of rainfall before 1960 and allow for the extension of the national series back to 1836. The report presents summary statistics for the most recent year 2021 against the most recent decade 2012–2021, and following World Meteorological Organization (WMO) climatological best‐practice against the most recent 30‐year standard climate normal period 1991–2020 and the baseline period 1961–1990 (WMO, 2017). These two 30‐year reference periods do not overlap. The full series provide longer‐term context, while a comparison is also made to centennial averages for the Central England Temperature series. The decade 2012–2021 is a nonstandard reference period, but it provides a 10‐year “snapshot” of the most recent experience of the UK's climate and how that compares to historical records. This means that differences between 2012–2021 and the 30‐year reference periods may reflect shorter‐term decadal variation...

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Section: A2 | Haduk-grid Datasetmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A2 | Haduk-grid Datasetmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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State of the UK Climate 2021

Kendon

McCarthy

Jevrejeva

et al. 2022

Intl Journal of Climatology

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“…UK rainfall was close to the 1961–1990 mean, although western Scotland was drier than average and parts of England and Wales were wetter. Although not a remarkable year for overall rainfall accumulation, the UK rainfall series now benefits from the inclusion of millions of newly digitised historical rain gauge observations, as a result of a large citizen science initiative (Hawkins et al ., 2022; Kendon et al ., 2022).…”

Section: European and Uk Climatementioning

confidence: 99%

Global and regional climate in 2021

Kennedy

Christidis

Dunn

et al. 2022

Weather

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Concentrations of greenhouse gases reached record levels in 2021, and energy continued to accumulate in the climate system with the ocean heat content reaching a new record high. La Niña events at the start and end of 2021, however, meant that the global mean temperature in 2021 was only between 5th and 7th warmest year on record. We give a summary of the global climate with a focus on the UK and Europre.

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“…The associated website, RainfallRescue.org, received widespread media interest and, within 16 days, the complete set of sheets had been digitised by over 16,000 volunteer 'citizen scientists', making it the most successful project, in terms of the numbers of volunteers and tasks involved, ever hosted by the Zooniverse. [1] Details of the project and its outcomes have recently been provided by Hawkins et al (2022) and it has led to new monthly rainfall estimates for the U.K. and its ten regions being made available to download at https://www.meto ce.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-and-regional-series. Time series analyses of these new rainfall data are reported in this paper.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling monthly patterns in regional rainfall for the United Kingdom: a time series analysis of the Rainfall Rescue data

Mills

2022

Preprint

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In March 2020 the Rainfall Rescue project was launched on the Zooniverse platform with the aim of transcribing 66,000 sheets of rainfall observations into digital form. The associated website, RainfallRescue.org, received widespread media interest and, within 16 days, the complete set of sheets had been digitised by over 16,000 volunteer ‘citizen scientists’. The project has led to new monthly rainfall estimates for the U.K. and its ten regions being made available to download and time series analyses of these new rainfall data are reported in this paper. Using a seasonal linear trends model fitted to power transformed rainfall data, it is found that over the period 1836 to 2021 winters have become progressively wetter and fluctuations in monthly rainfall more pronounced the further west and north you move in the U.K., with little or no change in summer rainfall.

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Millions of historical monthly rainfall observations taken in the UK and Ireland rescued by citizen scientists

Cited by 18 publications

References 32 publications

State of the UK Climate 2021

State of the UK Climate 2021

Global and regional climate in 2021

Modelling monthly patterns in regional rainfall for the United Kingdom: a time series analysis of the Rainfall Rescue data

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