- Digitization of historical data at DWD - Wolfgang Gloeden Marine Data Archive, Hamburg

KLIDADIGI Overseas HISTOR DWD-Projects to make historical data available KLIDADIGI Digitization of all historical data from German land stations Overseas Digitization of data from overseas stations HISTOR Digitization of historical navigation logbooks and meteorological ship journals

KLIDADIGI Overseas HISTOR DWD-Projects to make historical data available KLIDADIGI Digitization of all historical data from German land stations Overseas Digitization of data from oberseas stations HISTOR Digitization of historical navigation logbooks and meteorological ship journals

Example of a climate table from 1896 Example of a climate record from the Baltic Sea island POEL from January 1896 with corrections from the Weather Service. It makes no sense to use OCR (optical character recognition) to digitize such handwritten and corrected documents. DWD / ACRE / 09/2009

Temporal availability of digital temperature data Climate stations: Measurements: temperature, humidity, precipitation, in parts: pressure, sunshine duration, soil temperature; estimates: wind, cloudiness. Monthly: digital available monthly means of temperature KLIDADIGI: in the project KLIDADIGI digitized three times a day (most at 07, 14, 21 local time) Daily: allready digitized The potential for digitization is the difference between the monthly –minus- daily data DWD / ACRE / 09/2009

Progress in digitization of daily climate records Hamburg 100 years records with less than 3 years of missing data Records prolonged in the KLIDADIGI project Future plans Spatial distribution of the available long time series (100 years) for climate stations, those in the last three years prolonged series (more than 10 years) and the future plans (most of these records are on micro films) DWD / ACRE / 09/2009

Precipitation network Digitized amount and future plans Precipitation network Climate network Total potential (100%): 165000 station-years = 330 person-years Total potential (100%): 23000 station-years = 460 person-years There are about 10 DWD-staff members who are typing the data: one person could digitize 30 to 50 station years per year or 400-500 station years of precipitation. The project KLIDADIGI runs till 2013 and we hope it will be continued. Up to now digitized: 7% 10% Plan until 2013: 4%

KLIDADIGI Overseas HISTOR DWD-Projects to make historical data available KLIDADIGI Digitization of all historical data from German land stations Overseas Digitization of data from oberseas stations HISTOR Digitization of historical navigation logbooks and meteorological ship journals

Archive of historical manuscripts of climate observations from overseas At Deutscher Wetterdienst in Hamburg, there exists an extensive archive with original historical manuscripts of climate observations of more than 600 stations covering the period 1894 to 1939. Most records are written in German language and script. There are monthly, yearly, daily and in some cases hourly data of the traditional climate elements. The picture shows an weather station for climat observation in the tropics. About half of the records are from stations in Africa. The Metadata are complete available. The digitized records will go back to the countries, where the data came from. The original manuscripts will stay at DWD. DWD / ACRE / 09/2009

Geographical distribution of historical stations Labrador China and Korea Africa Micronesia South America Melanesia DWD / ACRE / 09/2009

Number of stations subject to length of observation periods The digitization has just started, but will most probably need years because of lacking resources. DWD / ACRE / 09/2009

KLIDADIGI Overseas HISTOR DWD-Projects to make historical data available KLIDADIGI Digitization of all historical data from German land stations Overseas Digitization of data from oberseas stations HISTOR Digitization of historical navigation logbooks and meteorological ship journals

The Archive

The Navigation Logbooks

The Navigation Logbooks

State of the archive Archive No. of books No. of Obs completed Digitization Instr. Corr. Date, Time, Pos Met. Check Archive No. of books No. of Obs   completed ca.  16.900 10.194.000 POS-Files 2.754 827.000 ERF-Files 157 52.000 MarkObs 4.735 2.721.000 Σ done ca. 24.546 13.794.000 Σ total - Σ done ca. 12.563 ca. 7.600.000

Barque DORADE After the HISTOR-Project all observations are keyed, each gap is defined – but sometimes there are other reasons for data loss … Punta Arenas Iquique North- and Southatlantic Pacific Ocean North- and Southatlantic

Barque DORADE After the HISTOR-Project all observations are keyed, each gap is defined – but sometimes there are other reasons for data loss … ? Punta Arenas Iquique North- and Southatlantic Pacific Ocean North- and Southatlantic

Barque DORADE After the HISTOR-Project all observations are keyed, each gap is defined – but sometimes there are other reasons for a data loss … The recording of the next 12 days were ripped out of the rough book by our board dog „Carlo“, and before we could grab it from him, these pages were gone …

Thank you for your attention ! DWD / ACRE / 09/2009