There is a new historic temperature series available. There is a small problem though: the data is all handwritten. Volunteers are therefore being sought to translate the data into machine readable formats.
World War One ships chart past climate
The public are being asked to revisit the voyages of World War One Royal Navy warships to help scientists working on a JISC project to understand the climate of the past and unearth new historical information.
Visitors to OldWeather.org, which launches today (12 October 2010), will be able to retrace the routes taken by any of 280 Royal Navy ships including historic vessels such as HMS Caroline, the last survivor of the 1916 Battle of Jutland still afloat.
The naval logbooks contain a treasure trove of information but because the entries are handwritten they are incredibly difficult for a computer to read. By getting an army of online human volunteers to retrace these voyages and transcribe the information recorded by British sailors we can relive both the climate of the past and key moments in naval history.