ARCTIC REDISCOVERY Crowd-sourcing new science from intractable data Kevin Wood, Mark Mollan, Philip Brohan, Nancy Soreide University of Washington / U.S. National Archives and Records Administration / UK Met Office Hadley Center / NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory ARCTIC STEAMER JEANNETTE

Why? Millions Millions of observations International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere DataSet (ICOADS) Individual Ship Reports – scarce in Bering Sea / Arctic … yet we know many ships were collecting hourly observations in this region 2

Ships like these… USRC Bear USRC Perry USCS Patterson USRC Corwin USS Vicksburg USS Yorktown USS Rodgers USS Jeannette USRC Rush USS Pinta USRC Thetis 3

Log books 4

Photograph the original log books 300, ,000 pages imaged so far High resolution imaging station at US National Archives I Digital Imaging Center in Washington DC 5

Transcribe the original log books 6 Log page for USRC Thetis from May 5, 1884 – as transcribed through oldweather.org. Colored boxes drawn by transcribers (blue for weather, red for locations, grey for dates). Each page is transcribed by at least 3 people; data values shown on right. Old Weather

Transcribe Thousands Thousands of citizen scientists… Old Weather 7 the original log books

Compare Route of Thetis - Summer 1884 from New York, through Labrador Sea and Baffin Bay and Back Air Pressure Wind Speed Air Temperature Historical observations Modern climatology 8 Observations made by USRC Thetis on her voyage from New York to Smith Sound in summer 1884 (red dots), compared with modern climatologies for the last few years (black lines). Air pressure and wind speed are harder to compare because we expect bigger differences between an observation (a point value) and a climatology (an average over several years).

Compare Thetis observations of ice fit pretty well with modern expectations Thetis observations of ice fit pretty well with modern expectations, but observations generally imply heavy ice cover, whereas modern observations suggest heavy ice cover only in particularly severe years. Tentative conclusion is that, in summer 1884 in Baffin bay, there was more sea-ice than usual (by modern standards) but that the coverage was within the expected current range of year-to year variability. This is consistent with their air temperature observations, which were colder than the modern average, but not dramatically so. Ice observations from Thetis 1884 (black text) compared with modern ice data (colors ) 1984 Modern Ice data from HadISST Maximum ice coverage Mean ice coverage Minimum ice coverage 9

Re-Analyze atmosphere & sea ice Twentieth Century Reanalysis is an international effort to produce a comprehensive global atmospheric circulation from 1871 to the present. Intercomparisons with independent radiosonde data indicate the reanalysis are generally of high quality N 80N 70N 60N 50N 40N

Modern instrumentation deployed on a drifting ice floe 11

New science from the accidental drift of the Arctic steamer Jeannette Track ( ) and probable trajectories Jeannette track 1879–

Save the logbooks Jeannette crushed, June 1881 Melville’s party De Long’s men carry the logbooks ashore through a mile of broken ice on the north end of the Lena River Delta, Siberia, 17 September 1881 One of four volumes en route to Old Weather Saving the boats 13

Weather data from the Jeannette

History, History, adventure, plasma physics, unexpected botany, mutiny… 15

Extraordinary stories Captain Roald Amundsen came on board as a guest of the captain...typhoon signal spotted on shore...steaming through scattered wreckage in thick fog...ran down the convoy at first light and found three ships missing...engaged in placing six bodies in barrels of alcohol…Natives came on board bringing a number of articles from the wrecked whaling bark "Vigilant" 16

Moments of discovery Jeannette Island (Ostrov Zhannetty) 17

6 NOAA’s atmospheric baseline observatory at Barrow, Alaska 18 HMS Plover Weather observations at Point Barrow 1852–1854 Deploy a replica of the Plover instrumentation at modern Point Barrow Observatory Education and outreach with Commack High School: The HMS Plover historical data intercomparison project

The Plover project at the NOAA Barrow Observatory Plover screen The Plover project collected data from the replica in parallel with standard weather data from the Observatory for about a year. 6 NOAA’s atmospheric baseline observatory at Barrow, Alaska Plover screen 19

The Plover project at the NOAA Barrow Observatory Plover screen The difference in daily mean between the standard 2 meter sensor and the HMS Plover replica is generally small (>1 °C) but the causes of the deviations between the two over hourly to seasonal time scales remains to be investigated. 6 NOAA’s atmospheric baseline observatory at Barrow, Alaska 20

Other uses unimagined… Old (Space) Weather 21 “… building up historical sequences of auroral observations is really quite important in studying solar activity before the space age” Solar Stormwatch PI

The scientific value of the work accomplished by these men, living and dead, can only be estimated after their observations have been compiled and computed, compared and applied - all of which will involve years of patient toil. George W. Melville Chief Engineer and survivor of the Jeannette (129 years later) George W. Melville, 1885

Nicholson Whaling Collection 23 ARCTIC REDISCOVERY Crowd-sourcing new science from intractable data