Naval Records from the 1800s- The Key to Unlocking Arctic Warming?
Takepart.com – Sat, Nov 3, 2012
What do Arctic warming, Hurricane Sandy, and Naval records
from the Victorian Age have in common? Everything. The warming of the
Arctic may have played a large role in redirecting Hurricane Sandy
farther south than would be usual, allowing it to hit the Jersey Shore
(historically not a popular hurricane destination.) Though Arctic
warming was confirmed earlier this year when ice levels were found to be at an all-time low,
the truth of the matter is our records only go back about 30 years. In
order to confirm these warmer climates, handwritten U.S. Naval logbooks,
dating back to the 1800s, are being transcribed via a unique
crowdsourcing project that may unlock key mysteries to Arctic changes.
Scientific American reports that Old Weather, a site belonging to the Zooniverse
network of citizen science projects, allows visitors to actively
participate in transcribing naval ship records from bygone eras in order
to gain a deeper understanding of current alterations in climate
patterns.Slate reports that Old Weather visitors have already helped the site’s scientists transcribe more than 1.6 million weather observations from Great Britain’s Royal Navy logbooks. Now that Old Weather has uploaded 150 years worth of Arctic-related records from the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard― all hand written, much of it without a thought towards good penmanship― the site is hoping its weather geek users will devote their time to accomplishing a similar goal.
The U.S. Navy has made voyages to the Arctic since 1839, and the minutiae related to each of these visits― including observations about the weather, pirate abductions, and other moments of note― were recorded in well-preserved books, scans of which were uploaded to the site last week. Once those entries have been transcribed, researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will integrate it into already known data in order to identify weather patterns and changes.
Skeptics may wonder how the Old Weather project can really make a difference in our current understanding of climate change
if it’s being crowdsourced. According to Slate, crowdsourcing projects
like this— ones that are helmed by scientists, but need droves of
researchers to collect data— have yielded some impressive results. One
of the most well-publicized happened last year when online gamers deciphered the molecular structure of an HIV enzyme in a matter of weeks after the mystery had stumped scientists for over ten years.
But how does Old Weather ensure
the accuracy of transcriptions? Text of each log has to pass through
three different transcribers before it can be accepted.
But perhaps the best part of the
project is that it connects science buffs, activists, historians and the
like to collaborate towards a common goal that could have life-altering
consequences. And doing something about climate change is much more
rewarding than simply fearing it.
Do
you think projects like Old Weather will actually lead to shifts in our
understanding of climate change? Let us know in the Comments.
Related Stories on TakePart:
A
Bay Area native, Andri Antoniades previously worked as a fashion
industry journalist and medical writer. In addition to reporting the
weekend news on TakePart, she volunteers as a web editor for locally-based nonprofits and works as a freelance feature writer for TimeOutLA.com. Email Andri | @andritweets | TakePart.com
end quote from:
No comments:
Post a Comment