History and science meet
The East India Company ships' journals are a vital source of information for climate scientists because of the detailed information they contain about the weather.
Log of the ship Rochester, 1710 [IOR/L/MAR/B/137B]
This early journal of the Rochester is typical in that it recorded the wind direction and described the weather for each day. The Rochester journal is unusual in that it also includes some beautiful drawings, and a skull and crossbones mark each death during the voyage. On this occasion, the sailor was thought to have fallen overboard ‘being in liquor’.
Journal of the ship Rochester, 1710 [IOR/L/MAR/B/137B]
Later ships' journals give instrumental weather data such as pressure readings, and these are even more useful for climate scientists because of their greater precision. The weather data for several hundred East India Company ships' journals 1789-1834 has been extracted and used for climate modelling studies and weather and climate reconstructions (reanalyses). Philip Brohan of the UK Met Office talks about our journals and their usefulness for climate studies on Euronews today at 17-15 UK time. The story will be on euronews.com/space and also on esa.int.
The website Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth gives more details of how historic records can contribute to climate studies.
The British Library, UK Met Office and the Centre for World Environmental History, University of Sussex, have recently signed an agreement to collaborate to develop understanding of climate through the use of historic records.
Penny Brook
Lead Curator, India Office Records
Further reading -
P. Brohan, R. Allan, E. Freeman, D. Wheeler, C. Wilkinson, and F. Williamson, 2012: ‘Constraining the temperature history of the past millennium using early instrumental observations’ Climate of the Past
Gilbert P. Compo, Prashant D. Sardeshmukh, Jeffrey S. Whitaker, Philip Brohan, Philip D. Jones and Chesley McColl, 2013: ‘Independent confirmation of global land warming without the use of station temperatures’ Geophysical Research Letters
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