Old whaling logs provide trove of information for climate scientists
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.029458
Christian Science Monitor : The meticulous logbooks kept by crew members on New England whaling vessels are now being mined by climate scientists seeking weather-related information about the Arctic from before 1979, when the northern ice cap was first systematically measured. The New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts has about 2600 such logbooks, spanning the years between 1756 and 1965. As the books are digitized and the information put online, citizen scientists are being called on to sift through the vast amounts of data, which include precise longitude and latitude measurements, weather conditions, and location of icebergs and the ice shelf. Such historical weather-related data can be used to aid computer models to make better predictions of future conditions.
