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Background and Scope

Meetings

Documents

UK

US

Selected Bibliography

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Background and Scope:

• The European Union-funded Climatological Database for the World's Oceans (CLIWOC) 1750-1854 project (completed in 2003) focused on ship logbooks containing "semi-instrumental" (e.g., wind force and wind direction) observations (García-Herrera, 2005) from Dutch, Spanish, French and UK archives--RECLAIM aims to continue and build upon the results and knowledge gained during CLIWOC.
• Vast numbers of undigitized historical ship logbooks exist in UK archives, and smaller, but still significant, amounts exist in Dutch, French, German, and other European archives--were not included or only partially utilized by CLIWOC. Some logbooks extend back into the 17th century. Considerable untapped resources also reside in US archives (e.g., Navy logbooks back to 1801).
• Marine meteorological (and oceanographic) observations, which now are managed via the JCOMM Voluntary Observing Ship (VOS) Scheme, are among the few ocean data that span centuries, and represent a critical resource for climate and global change studies. The world's largest collection of digital ship logbook data, beginning in the late 18th century, has been assembled in the International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) (Worley et al., 2005).
• RECLAIM's long-term scope is to digitize semi-instrumental logbooks such as were used for CLIWOC, but include also logbooks extending well into the instrumental (mainly post-1853) era, such as during the data-sparse World War II period.