Old Weather, a project from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is one of a growing number of crowdsourcing efforts that enlists the help of citizen scientists or citizen historians from around the world. For this specific project, volunteers are asked to help transcribe a fascinating collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century ship's logs that highlight weather, water, and ice conditions. As the About section notes, these documents are especially important because they not only help historians better understand the nature of nineteenth century voyages, but they also help contemporary climate scientists identify past weather patterns. On this website, built using the open-source tool Scribe, readers may opt to explore Arctic logs from U.S. Navy and Coast Guard voyages, or Whaling logs. Visitors can then read these entries and provide transcriptions and annotations for the project. Old Weather also features a blog that highlights a number of fascinating historical events centering on the role of weather in shipping.
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