Unearthing Australia’s climate history

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

In November and December of 1829, the Perth region was battered by “strong squalls” and a “very fresh wind and boisterous sea“. The gale-force winds pushed the H.M.S Success aground, and was part of a succession of wind-related shipwrecks which contributed to “failure and famine” difficulties in the colony of Swan River, Western Australia.  How … Continue reading Reconstructing past extremes using historical wind observations

The term ‘hoar frost’ comes from the Old English term ‘hoar’ which can mean old, aged, venerable or grey – although it’s most commonly used to mean ‘grey-haired with age’. As a weather description, it refers to a type of frost that resembles an old man’s grey, feathery beard. One of the volunteers on our … Continue reading ‘Hoar frost’ in Perth, 1899

We’ve had a few queries on our current Zooniverse project Forum page about why we aren’t using machines or artificial intelligence (AI) to transcribe these weather journals. Sometimes, this type of data transcription is called Machine Learning (ML) or Optical Character Recognition/Reader (OCR). The reason we need actual people to transcribe these documents is that … Continue reading Why we don’t use computers to transcribe these historical weather records