Climate History Australia is a landmark initiative to reconstruct Australian climate over past centuries.
Using a range of historical records, our team pieces together past climate variability and extremes to understand their influence on Australian society over time. Understanding the past helps scientists estimate Australia’s vulnerability to continued climate change.
“Yesterday, the city might almost be said to have been encircled by bush fires. There was hardly a point of the compass but was marked by huge volumes of smoke rising from the bush, and the resultant heat was almost unendurable. There was scarcely any sea-breeze during the day, and when at rare intervals a … Continue reading February 1900: Bushfires surround Perth during a heatwave
In 2020 and 2021, Climate History Australia ran two citizen science projects on Zooniverse. The aim was to transcribe observations from 19th century handwritten meteorological journals from Adelaide and Perth. The projects recovered a total of 26 years’ worth of historical climate observations. We had more than 1,790 volunteers on Zooniverse, and collected a combined … Continue reading Wrap up of Climate History Australia’s citizen science projects on Zooniverse
On Tuesday 12 July, 1898, train lines in the Perth region of Western Australia were severely damaged due to severe flooding from heavy rainfall. This caused hundreds of people to be cut off from food, water and proper shelter, with the tracks not able to be repaired for a number of days. The “washaway near … Continue reading July 1898: Storm in Perth strands hundreds
Our citizen science volunteers have now helped to fill a twenty-year data gap in Perth’s daily weather record, by transcribing historical weather journals that cover the period 1880 to 1900. It took 1,790 volunteers 72 days to transcribe over 34,000 weather observations on the citizen science platform, Zooniverse. These newly transcribed observations will help link together … Continue reading The longest daily weather record for Perth is now fully transcribed!
