Would you like to help Scientists by getting involved in a real Science project for Science Week? If so, then read on to see how you can contribute.
This year’s project, run by Citizen Science and Zooniverse is called Operation Weather Rescue. Scientists need the public’s help to digitise 2.5 million pieces of weather information between the years of 1860 and 1880.
This involves entering pieces of historical weather information into their database from old handwritten records that appear on screen. It is really easy to do and instructions are provided.
One of the biggest challenges that researchers face is access to historical data sets. Before we had computers, early scientists would often write their data by hand. Every day since 1860 the UK Met Office has produced daily weather reports from across western Europe. Originally the weather observations were transmitted by telegraph to London and collated. Many of these records have now been scanned or are archived in libraries across the globe. However, much of the data within these books hasn’t been digitised. The most accurate way of doing this is manually entering the data into a computer. All in all, there are over 2.5 million pieces of data that need to be entered from this period – something that would take the team – made up of researchers from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, the University of Reading and the Earth System Research Laboratory – years to enter themselves.
Why is this important?
Once digitised, it will be the first time that climate scientists and meteorologists from around the globe will have had access to the raw data. This will give them a better understanding of the climate from the past and will help us to predict what the future could look like.
The team will use the data to better examine storms and unusual weather events. As the world warms, the data will provide a baseline to help us measure those changes and monitor climate change, which will impact people and environments across the world.
How can you get involved?
- During British Science Week, go to: http://www.weatherrescue.org and click “Get Started
- Read the instructions in the pop-up box and when you get to the end, select “Let’s go!”
- Become a citizen scientist and help to tackle climate change!
