Digitizing observations from the 1861–1875 Met Office Daily Weather Reports using citizen scientist volunteers

Abstract

We describe the transcription and quality control processes for rescuing around 570,000 sub-daily and daily weather observations which were recorded in the UK Met Office Daily Weather Reports during the 1861–1875 period. These data are from the start of coordinated weather observations and were collected with the aim of making the first-ever weather forecasts. The observations were rescued thanks to 3500 volunteers and include sub-daily sea-level pressure, dry and wet bulb temperatures, daily maximum and minimum temperatures, and daily rainfall amounts from 70 different locations across Western Europe, and one in Canada. We highlight how these observations will be used to fill gaps in existing pressure and temperature datasets and use two case studies to show how the pressure observations will likely better constrain the atmospheric circulation during two severe storms. We also compare a sub-sample of the newly rescued observations with data that were previously digitized for a small number of locations for the same dates, finding good agreement in general, although some discrepancies remain.