Linden ASHCROFT,Rob ALLAN,Howard BRIDGMAN,Jo¨elleGERGIS, Christa PUDMENZKY,and Ken THORNTON

1Centre forClimate Change,UniversitatRovira iVirgili,Tortosa,43500,Spain,

2MetOffce Hadley Centre,Exeter,EX13PB,United Kingdom

3School ofEnvironmentaland Life Sciences,The University ofNew castle,New SouthWales,2300,Australia

4SchoolofEarth Sciences,The University ofMelbourne,Victoria,3010,Australia

5InternationalCentre forApplied Climate Sciences,University ofSouthern Queensland,Toowoomba,4350,Australia

6Cultural Collections,The University ofNew castle,New SouthWales,2300,Australia

Current Climate Data Rescue Activities in Australia

Linden ASHCROFT?1,Rob ALLAN2,Howard BRIDGMAN3,Jo¨elleGERGIS4, Christa PUDMENZKY5,and Ken THORNTON6

1Centre forClimate Change,UniversitatRovira iVirgili,Tortosa,43500,Spain,

2MetOffce Hadley Centre,Exeter,EX13PB,United Kingdom

3School ofEnvironmentaland Life Sciences,The University ofNew castle,New SouthWales,2300,Australia

4SchoolofEarth Sciences,The University ofMelbourne,Victoria,3010,Australia

5InternationalCentre forApplied Climate Sciences,University ofSouthern Queensland,Toowoomba,4350,Australia

6Cultural Collections,The University ofNew castle,New SouthWales,2300,Australia

1.Introduction

Recovering historical instrumental climate data is crucial for identifying long-term climate variability and change, putting present clim ate into context and constraining future climateprojections(Brunetand Jones,2011).In otherwords, to understand the future,we need to improveourunderstanding of thepast.

Climate data rescue is a well-established practice in many Northern Hemisphere countries,where the instrumental record can stretch back several centuries[e.g.,Parker et al.(1992)for England,and Slonosky(2002)for France].In Australia,however,the recovery and analysis of historical weather observations has not been the subject of such dedication until recently.

Indigenous Australianshave lived in Australia for thousandsof years and,while Indigenous culture is inextricably linked to the land,Aboriginal environmental history is often preserved through oral traditions,w ith detailed information about seasonal cycles rather than year-to-year changes (Greenetal.,2010).Thisinformationisimportantforclimate impact studies,but rarely provides sufficient detail for the study of interannual climate variations or particular events. Chronologicalw ritten recordsof Australian history therefore only begin w ith British settlement in 1788.

A lthough docum ented history in Australiamay be shorter than that of other regions,there are still many sources of historical climate information waiting to be rescued. Starting w ith the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s push in the 1990s to recover observations w ithin their own archives(Rayner et al.,2004),several dedicated efforts have now begun recovering historical instrumental information about Australia’s climatic past.Interestingly,many of these data rescue projects engage“citizen scientists”in the identificationand recovery ofdata,ensuring thatthe fascinating storiesbehind Australia’s climatehistory are sharedw ith the public.

2.Bringing Australia'spast in to the p resen t

From 2010 to 2014,the South Eastern Australian Recent Climate History(SEARCH)projectbrought together historians,climatologists,hydrologists,palaeoclimatologistsand volunteers to reconstruct the climateof the highly-populated southeastern region.More than 290 000 instrumental observationswere recovered from nationaland state archivescovering 1788–1860(Ashcroftetal.,2014).

Observations of temperature,pressure and rainfall were extracted from new spapers,farm ers’diaries,governm ent documentsand observatory reports,to build an instrumental pictureof the first72 yearsof British settlement in Australia. This includesobservations from LieutenantWilliam Dawes, an astronomeron the First Fleet,who dutifully recorded the hot and dry conditions experienced by the early settlers in 1790(Gergisetal.,2009).

In South Australia,the Australian Meteorological Association hasbeen running oneof the country’s longestclimate citizen science endeavours.For over10 years the group have been finding and digitising Australian clim ate data from as far back as 1832.Their efforts include the digitisation of 40 years of weathermaps drawn by the famous polymath Sir Charles Todd(Benoy,2011;www.charlestodd.net/Todd Folios/),to the recovery of lighthouse records from the late 19th century acrossAustralia’ssouthern coastline.

In New SouthWales,a team from TheUniversityofNewcastle is currently rescuing an extremely detailedweather diary from grazier Algernon Belfield.The transcription of his diarywas completed in early 2016 by localand international volunteers.Belfield’s journal from his farm in inland New South Wales is unique not only for its high level of detail (40 years of daily observations)but for its location in a region that isvery sensitive to ENSO(Risbey etal.,2009).Thediary covers1882–1922,a period of high ENSO variability, and w ill therefore provide valuable insight into theweather experienced by colonial farmers during tumultuous climatic times.

Finally,the citizen science project“Weather Detectives”,jointly run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the University of Southern Queensland,has engaged over 11 000 volunteers in the digitisation of observations from ship log books(www.weatherdetective.net.au/) collected by Queensland’s colourfulmeteorologist Clement Lindley W ragge(Adamson,2003).More than 485 000 observationshaveso farbeen transcribed from the log booksof ships that traversed the ocean surrounding Australia,aswell as thew iderAtlantic,Indian and Pacific oceans from 1882 to 1903.

3.From Australia to theworld

These projects are just a few examp lesof Australia’s active data rescue comm unity.The data recovered are already inform ing historical studies(Gergis et al.,2010),global reanalysis products(Allan et al.,2011;Cram et al.,2015) and long-term climatevariability assessments(Callaghan and Power,2014).Therearestillmanymoresourcesofhistorical climatedata forAustralia to beuncovered and anew regional data rescue focus of the International Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructionsover the Earth Initiative(ACRE,Allan etal.2011)—ACREAustralia—is planned.In themeantime,these efforts combined w ith data rescue in other parts of the Southern Hem isphere(e.g.,Grab and Nash,2010;Lorrey and Chappell,2015)ensure thatourglobalclim ate past is looking clearer than ever before.

Acknow ledgements.David KAROLY and Mac BENOY are acknow ledged for their work w ith the SEARCH project and the Australian Meteorological Association,respectively.SEARCH was funded by an Australian Research Council Linkagegrant(GrantNo. LP099015).Rob ALLAN issupported by a combination of funding from the Joint BEIS/Defra MetOffice Hadley Centre Climate Programme(GA01101),the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme(FP7)European ReanalysisofGlobalClimateObservations 2(ERA-CLIM 2)projectand the Climate Science for Service Partnership(CSSP)Chinaunder the New ton Fund.

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:Ashcroft,L.,R.Allan,H.Bridgman,J.Gergis,C.Pudmenzky,and K.Thornton,2016:Currentclimate data rescue activities in Australia.Adv.Atmos.Sci.,33(12),1323–1324,

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?Corresponding author:Linden ASHCROFT

Email:lindenclaire.ashcroft@urv.cat