I came across an interesting website the other day - www.oldweather.org
It’s an effort to compile weather statistics from years past by combing through old ship’s logs. They use a sort of “crowd-sourcing” by having weather & maritime enthusiasts log in and look at scanned copies of vessel logbooks from as far back as the 1800’s. Site users then transcribe the weather stats to a digital format. The digital stats get compiled and error checked and added to the body of knowledge that climatologists use to create accurate climate models.
You have to sign up and select a username and password, but the whole thing is free, of course. The user interface is a little bit clunky, but I got used to it quickly enough with a bit of practice. It’s actually kind of neat to read some of those old logbook entries from ships back then. Not something that I [I]personally [/I]could do for hours on end every day, but I thought some folks around here might have a keener interest in it than myself. Seems to me that it provides a tangible benefit to the scientific community as well.
Anyway, thought that was worth sharing.