Urgent Data Rescue Mission
An Irish research institution has launched an ambitious citizen science project to preserve and digitize approximately 4 million historical African weather records that risk being lost forever, according to project organizers. The initiative, led by Maynooth University’s ICARUS Climate Research Centre, aims to address critical data gaps in one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable regions.
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Historical Context and Preservation Challenges
The endangered dataset includes weather observations from 43 African countries originally collected by multiple international organizations, sources indicate. These records were initially rescued in the 1980s by the African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development, the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium and the World Meteorological Organization, with images preserved on microfilm and microfiche after the original paper records were reportedly destroyed.
In 2021, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service converted the data to electronic images to prevent further degradation, analysts suggest. However, the project team states that significant challenges remain, as image quality varies considerably and crucial metadata about recording locations and dates is often incomplete or missing.
Critical Need for Data Processing
“Before we can transcribe the data, we need to separate the images that are readable from those that are unreadable,” says ICARUS PhD researcher Kevin Healion, who is involved in the project. He further explained that establishing the station name, month and year of observation is essential, as “otherwise rescuing the data will be all but impossible.”
The report states that once researchers identify usable images and their provenance, the actual data rescue process can begin, potentially unlocking centuries of climate information currently inaccessible to researchers.
Global Climate Implications
According to ICARUS director Professor Peter Thorne, “Rescuing African weather data is vitally important if we are to better understand climate change in this very climate-vulnerable region of the world.” The project team emphasizes that analyzing historical weather data is crucial for estimating, mitigating and adapting to the climate crisis, yet billions of global weather observations from the past 300 years remain unavailable in machine-readable formats.
Researchers note that access to historical weather data is particularly poor across Africa, with large continental regions having no available weather data for climate research. Making this historical data accessible would reportedly enable better understanding of how climate is changing across the continent.
Citizen Science Platform
The project is being launched on Zooniverse, a global platform connecting professional researchers with volunteers, with support from the Irish Centre for High-End Computing. This approach allows public participation in classifying and preserving crucial climate data that could shape future climate adaptation strategies.
Project organizers indicate that volunteers worldwide can contribute by visiting the Weather Archive Africa project website to help classify the endangered data.
Broader Climate Research Context
The African data rescue initiative comes as ICARUS continues expanding its climate research capabilities. Last month, the center partnered with Met Éireann to release a new rapid high-temperature attribution analysis providing quick insights into Ireland’s changing climate. That research found that record-breaking nighttime temperatures during summer 2023 were made 40 times more likely due to human-caused climate change, according to their analysis.
This latest project represents part of a growing global effort to preserve historical climate data before it deteriorates beyond recovery, with particular focus on regions where climate vulnerability and data scarcity intersect most critically.
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References & Further Reading
This article draws from multiple authoritative sources. For more information, please consult:
- https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/healion90/weather-archive-africa
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Centre_of_Meteorological_Application_for_Development
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernicus_Climate_Change_Service
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitization
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Meteorological_Institute
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