A historical Southern Ocean climate dataset from whaling ships’ logbooks ...

Historical ship logbooks provide vital historic meteorological observations in the Southern Ocean, one of the largest climate-data deficient regions on the Earth. Christian Salvesen Whaling Company logbooks from whaling ships operating in the Southern Ocean, starting from the 1930s through the 1950s...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Teleti, Praveen, Rees, WG, Dowdeswell, J, Wilkinson, C
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.36482
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/289220
Description
Summary:Historical ship logbooks provide vital historic meteorological observations in the Southern Ocean, one of the largest climate-data deficient regions on the Earth. Christian Salvesen Whaling Company logbooks from whaling ships operating in the Southern Ocean, starting from the 1930s through the 1950s, are examined. Meteorological information contained in these logbooks has been extracted to produce a historical climate dataset. We discuss various instructions recommended by the British Admiralty to observe and record weather conditions on board whaling ships. Statistical tests were used to flag erroneous values and corrections were made using neighbouring values. Meteorological parameters such as air pressure, air and sea temperature and wind force on the Beaufort scale were standardised, converting imperial to metric units. The data were structured according to the internationally accepted International Maritime Meteorological Archive (IMMA) format, which includes the most commonly reported meteorological ...