University of Nottingham
  

e-Research approaches to historic weather data: sources, collaborations and methodologies for researching environmental change

Project outline

Bringing together researchers from the arts, humanities and sciences, representatives from archives, libraries and museums, and climate scientists from the Met Office this network investigated e-Research approaches to historic weather data. Focusing on sources, collaborations and methodologies for researching environmental change, it examined ways in which greater engagement and interaction with these materials could be encouraged via digitisation and representation online. It also explored ways in which primary source materials related to climate change could enable new research in the sciences and the humanities.

HMS Defence - sunk at Jutland. HMS Defence - sunk at Jutland 
 
 

Events

The network activities brought together stakeholders from disparate research communities to investigate, discuss and document the key historical source materials for weather reporting, and to explore ways in which these materials can be represented and accessed digitally in order to create new knowledge.

Workshop 1: Historic Weather Projects meeting

Location: University of Exeter
Date: 22nd October 2010

The meeting was an opportunity to present a number of projects that are working with archival sources that contain information about historic weather (including ACRE initiative, Old Weather, JISC SAILS, and AHRC BL India project), and to discuss the research objectives of these projects with an interdisciplinary group of stakeholders, including invited representatives from the maritime history community. Secondly, the group was able to address some of the issues of documenting, managing and using these sources for the widest possible use and analysis, using e-research approaches.

 

Workshop 2: Historic Weather Data technical planning meeting

Location: British Library
Date: 16th December 2010

The second workshop included both a steering committee meeting and a technical planning meeting which discussed the potential and possiblities of e-Research approaches.

 

Achievements

The network has been able to make recommendations for the development of a technological infrastructure to facilitate international, inter-disciplinary access to this material by the broadest community of users, taking a collective intelligence approach.

Project web page: http://historicweather.cerch.kcl.ac.uk/

Award details

Duration: August 2010 - September 2011

Principal Investigator:
Sheila Anderson

Co-Investigator:
Professor Lorna Hughes

Higher Education Institution:
Centre for e-Research, King's College London

Network partner

British Library logo

Related links

 

Landscape and Environment Programme

School of Geography
University Park
University of Nottingham
Nottingham, NG7 2RD

telephone: +44 (0) 115 84 66071
email: landscape@nottingham.ac.uk