Analyzing Weather Data from Historic Logbooks to Assess Changing Wind and Atmospheric Pressure Patterns

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This research project analyzes historic weather patterns using American whaling ship logbooks to understand how oceanic wind and pressure patterns have varied spatially over the past approximately 250 years. The project integrates disparate scholarly subfields as historians work with oceanographers to extend the instrumental meteorological record back two centuries and with a broader geographical distribution than is currently available. For safety, mariners recorded hazards to navigation on their charts, as well as weather data. The project extracts substantial meteorological data from historic logbooks, records heretofore inaccessible to modern scientists, and makes them freely available online. The investigators use these historic weather records to address current questions regarding shifts in wind and atmospheric pressure patterns. These include changes in high pressure systems that are related to the subtropical dry zones on land and the westerly storm tracks that steer the passage of rain-bearing weather systems. The understanding of past variability in these wind and atmospheric pressure patterns has societal relevance as these patterns directly impact agricultural productivity and can improve weather forecasting and modelling. Furthermore, the research can identify weather and navigational data that are of practical benefit to contemporary shipping, underscoring the project's importance to modern commercial navigation and maritime defense. The project includes training students in convergent science. Research results will be made available to the public via informal learning opportunities at museums and to the broader scientific community at interdisciplinary conferences.Long-term datasets are invaluable to meteorological research as they establish a baseline against which to measure recent changes, can validate models, and illuminate how the atmosphere and ocean interact. The historic logbooks being analyzed contain systematic weather observations (e.g., wind strength and direction, storms, sea state, precipitation, air temperature, atmospheric pressure) that will significantly extend the instrumental record. The newly-recovered historical data are combined with existing observational and reanalysis products to understand robustness and long-term context of variations in the Earth's atmospheric circulation over the past approximately 250 years. The investigators specifically consider: (a) changes in the Hadley circulation that are related to the expansion of subtropical dry zones, such as in the U.S. Southwest; and (b) changes in strength and position of subtropical high-pressure systems as manifestations of the descending limb of Hadley Cell circulation and changes in strength and position of the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds that were traversed by the whalers on their way to historical whaling grounds and which have recently experienced strong poleward shifts. Understanding long-term variability in subtropical high-pressure systems and westerly storm tracks has relevance for any regions affected by such meteorological patterns.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.