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.
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!
A little over two months ago, on 20 April 2021, we launched a new citizen science project to transcribe Perth’s daily weather journals from 1880 to 1900. This Zooniverse project is now at 78% completion, and over 1,780 people have volunteered. Anyone with access to the internet and a desktop computer can get involved. Every … Continue reading Project Update: Perth Zooniverse project close to completion
A “wave of heat” that was described at the time as “abnormal” and “unbearable”, affected Perth, Western Australia, from 1-4 January, 1896. During the “exceedingly long spell of hot weather”, there were at least seven reported “deaths from sunstroke”, as well as the passing of four infants in a nearby town. Perth experienced severe water … Continue reading Perth’s deadly heatwave of 1896
