Old Weather
The Old Weather project launched in 2010. It is a web based project in which members of the public volunteer their time to help climate scientists by transcribing weather observations written in historical shipping logs recovered from archives around the world.
We spoke to two highly active Old Weather contributors – Helen J [OW_1] and Joan Arthur [OW_2] – and two climate scientists that were involved in the project. We also spent time exploring and analysing the online forums that the community of volunteers use to communicate with one another.
Find out more on the ‘Data journey’ and ‘Culture’ pages, linked below, then once you have finished go to the Met Office station where you can read more about how Old Weather contributes to climate science in the ACRE section.
If you are interested in finding out more about the historical shipping logs that the volunteers are transcribing, go to Archives.
Archive sources
Reflection
We’d like you to take a minute to reflect on what you have read in this section.
Some questions to get you started:
How do you think the cultural values of the volunteers might impact upon the production and quality of the data transcribed by the Old Weather project?
What do you think it is that keeps the core volunteers so committed to the Old Weather project?
What different types of value do you think the project and its data hold for the volunteers and the climate scientists that use it?
How do you feel about climate scientists’ use of data generated by volunteer citizen scientists?