Ahoy, landlubbers: ancient sailors' climate logs

A voyage to the South Pole in 1940.

It was a ship of exploration, and not too long ago, so it probably isn't a surprise that modern day climate scientists are interested in its ship logs.

But what may surprise you is that scientists also want the logs of their more mundane counterparts: Cargo ships, whaling ships, navies, anything that floats, anywhere in the world, and as far back as they can get.

Way, way back to the age of sail, in the 1800s.

It's because, while humans have kept records of weather and temperatures for quite a long time, most of that is from people on land.

Enter Joan Arthur.

She's not a scientist. She's not a sailor either.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) "OLD WEATHER" VOLUNTEER, JOAN ARTHUR, SAYING:

"I'm pretty much a straight landlubber."

She's an office support worker at Oxford University by day. By night she's a volunteer with an online community that calls itself "Old Weather."

(SOUNDBITE) (English) "OLD WEATHER" VOLUNTEER, JOAN ARTHUR, SAYING:

"But the idea is, what happened over 71% of the planet is just covered in water, and the ship's logs, where they say it was a lovely day, it was 80 degrees, it was terrible it was minus 89. We can pick those out, put them into and electronic format, that the scientists can then access with ease. And one of the reasons why we are doing that, is computers still just have not worked out how to read some of the writing that we look at. They even struggle with some of the type written reports as well."

(SOUNDBITE) (English) "OLD WEATHER" VOLUNTEER, JOAN ARTHUR, SAYING:

"In fact the earliest log book we started on was the Jamestown. And that log book starts, if I remember correctly, on Christmas Eve in 1844 and some of the writing in it is just exquisite, but it is with very old fashioned pens."

It's all plugged into a database owned by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Here's what it looks like when visualized. Everything from a World War One cruiser to logs recovered from a shipwreck over century old at the North Pole.

Kevin Wood is an administration scientist.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) KEVIN WOOD, NOAA SCIENTIST, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

"The citizen scientists allow us to recover data that we know exists, but otherwise is inaccessible to science. So as a general rule, having their help collect more data is a, it's a universal good because now we have the data that we need to study features of the climate that we couldn't in the past. And we expect that that knowledge will help us better anticipate what climate change is going to do in the future."