BAMOS Autumn 2021 Vol 34 No.1 | Page 15

Article

BAMOS April 2021

15

Uncovering 19th century weather extremes in Adelaide and Perth

Caitlin Howlett

Each stripe represents each day over the 1843 – 1851 study period . To categorise how wet each day was we looked at how often rain was mentioned each day . The red stripes show no or very light rain ( either no mention or one mention of rain in the comments ), yellow shows moderate rain ( two mentions of rain in a day ), and blue shows heavy rain or really wet days ( more than two mentions of rain in a day ). Source : Climate History Australia .

Climate History Australia ( CHA ), led by Dr Joelle Gergis at the Australian National University ( ANU ), aims to recover and analyse the earliest , near-continuous , daily weather observations for Australia using citizen science .

Perth citizen science project

In April 2021 , CHA launched a new citizen science project on Zooniverse to transcribe historical weather journals from Perth from 1880 to 1900 . Transcribing these observations will help bridge the gap from older historical records to the beginnings of the Bureau of Meteorology .

Recently , the team recovered and analysed the oldest known daily weather observations from south-western Australia , that span 1830 – 1875 .

To date , the majority of historical data recovery efforts across the country have centered on south-eastern Australia . Recovering pre-1900 data for Perth allows us to combine historical data from across the country to better understand recent changes in southern Australia ’ s climate .

If you ’ d like to participate in or help promote the project , sign up to the Climate History Australia e-newsletter on the website so you ’ ll be notified of the launch : www . climatehistory . com . au .

Preliminary results from Adelaide citizen science project

From September to November 2020 , CHA volunteers helped fill data gaps in Adelaide ’ s daily weather record , transcribing historical weather journals from 1843 to 1856 . It took 1,103 volunteers 77 days to transcribe more than 33,400 observations on Zooniverse .

A preliminary analysis of the transcribed historical data indicated lots of interesting and impactful weather . The data show 1847 was a particularly eventful year ; with heatwaves in both February and December and a significant storm in July . The winters of 1846 and 1847 were also found to be unusually wet — while overall , the eight years spanning 1843 to 1851 were fairly dry .

Read more detail about the extreme events found from the preliminary analysis of this historical record for Adelaide .

The South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register , Saturday 27 Feb 1847 .