God bless the RN and their log books say the climatologists (if this indeed is the correct title for the set of learned people endeavouring to an understanding of when/how much/why the earth's climate has changed or is changing).
The pedantic way the RN records in minute detail the weather on watch (under pain of punishment for falsification) can give a wealth of previously hidden data to past periods in places (namely at sea) untapped but equally as important to the study of climate (we are on an aquatic planet after all). Circa WWI.
Trouble is, it's one thing to electronically scan past documents en masse, but it is quite another to have the AI to understand them
Enter:
http://www.oldweather.org/
BBC News article on the Project:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11532534
Akin to various astronomy projects, Joe Public has been asked to step into the breach and record (i.e. data entry) it for them, all in the name of a good cause. Actually seeing where WWI ships travelled to has a certain appeal to me. Their wanderings are quite interesting, rather than just popping up in the pages of a naval history tome to fight a battle it is just as interesting to see where they travelled to.
I hope it succeeds and it is an interesting source of information in itself.
