Irish Weather Rescue
from 01/09/2024 until 30/09/2026
The Irish Weather Rescue Project aims to digitise 3.5 million historic daily rainfall observations from 763 stations across Ireland. Members of the public are invited to transcribe the Rainfall Registers Series that dates from 1864 to 1951 which is held in the National Climate Archive, managed by Met Éireann.
Climatological series, such as these Registers, are vital for understanding climate change, by providing a detailed picture of how rainfall patterns have changed over long timescales. They are also important for the verification of climate models, improving the accuracy of future climate projections which are essential to support national climate resilience policy-making and planning. By converting these handwritten records into digital formats, participants are helping to make this important data accessible now and into the future.
Housed on Zooniverse, a global data rescue platform,
volunteers can access images of the weather records and templates to transcribe
the data. Detailed instructions, an online video tutorial and supports are
provided along with a discussion forum where volunteers can interact with the
project team. Once digitised, the data will be made available to researchers
and shared with national and international data repositories.
Aim
This project aims to reveal 'hidden' historic rainfall records through an online citizen science digitisation process. The meteorological series active on the site now contains approximately 3.5 million daily rainfall observations from 1864 to 1951.
How to participate
Navigate to www.irishweatherrescue.ie, register as a new user (unless you already have a Zooniverse account, in which case log in). Instructions on how to digitise data or metadata are provided in short videos at the bottom of the FAQ page under the 'About' tab.
There is a tutorial and a field guide to help with any issues and participants can post a question or comment in the discussion forum (under the 'Talk' tab on the right hand side of the page).
It takes approximately 3 minutes to digitise one month's worth of rainfall values.
Needed equipment
Participants will require a computer / laptop / tablet and a connection to the internet to get involved in this project, it is NOT suitable for mobile phones.