INTRODUCTION

The citizen science project I decided to embark on is called the Old Weather Arctic Project. Dr. Kevin Wood is the lead investigator on this popular project, that is backed by thousands of citizen scientist volunteers across the world who are dedicating their time to help explore, mark, and transcribe historic weather entries. The task of deciphering these old whaling, exploration, and patrolling ship records from the Arctic is in much need of volunteer assistance, because it is only capable through human abilities to understand the context and diverse handwritings. By picking out relevant historical weather information and through the use of computer models, it is possible for scientists to understand clearly what past weather phenomena was like, which aids in extrapolating weather patterns for the future. This is especially important with the present uncertainty of climate change in the world as the repercussions of this alteration have began to take shape. Below is a short video found from the website that informs the purpose behind the project, its sponsors, and how to get involved:  https://www.oldweather.org/index.html


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Transcribing

Image
I spent an hour and a half on 11/16/17 and another hour and a half on 11/17/17 transcribing. It was challenging at some points to decipher some of the text, and unfortunately there was a few I had to pass on as illegible, since I was unable to make sense of the old writing. Below are multiple examples of what would come up from markings of interest by other individuals that I have transcribed. I also inserted some entries I found quite interesting in the process of interpreting the old whaling logs. A common marking for transcription was for weather descriptions, including this one regarding wind direction and force. It says: Light wind from the S.W. (South west). In this other example of a transcription it asks for the date, which is: October 7th 1890. Here it asked to transcribe the marking of a section that describes a ship boring, warping, tracking, or ramming in close pack ice. It reads: Westward the ice slacked and worked a mile or two to the eastward. ...
Read more

Transcribing

Image
I spent over an hour this evening perusing through old log entries and transcribing the old text. Some of the text was quite challenging, especially some dates. With the aid of context clues and reading aloud, I was able to transcribe most very accurately. I have inserted some images from todays transcription session as a representation of my findings. This transcription gave me some trouble where 'did' is on the upper right, and I am assuming the individual was writing fast by the occasional untidiness in the log entry. This can be seen in some of the crosses for the T's. It reads: Saw whales, lowered twice for them, did not see them from the boats latter. This one took me a second and I had to play over the possibilities in my head, but eventually came up with the correct deciphering of snow squalls. This is a commonly asked subject for transcribing regarding wind direction and force. It reads: Blowing strong from the north .  This transcriptio...
Read more