Title: Examining historical meteorological records to assess past extreme weather events.

Ireland has a great heritage of historical meteorological observations, which are crucial for assessing the frequency, duration, intensity, and distribution of extreme weather events and climate change within a long-term historical context (Mateus and Potito, 2022). It is important to digitise historical meteorological observations into a computer-readable database as these historical observations are in danger of being lost due to the vulnerability of the original data-sources. Despite the rich heritage of meteorological records registered in Ireland (Mateus, 2021), numerous daily observations remain as paper data sources across multiple archives, such as newspaper archives, which must be digitised to fill key gaps in climate research. Historical meteorological observations are fundamental for climate monitoring, climate change detection and attribution, climate modelling, to assist climate action and adaption policies, reduce vulnerability and increase resilience to future extreme weather events in the context of changing climate.

Dr Mateus has visited several libraries and archives and taken photos of the original handwritten paper records and newspapers containing meteorological observations. Dr Mateus has organised folders with PDF images of these meteorological observations taken across locations in Ireland, covering the 19th century and the earliest observations from 1808. This period covers well-known historical extreme weather events such as cold waves in February 1855 and January 1881, heat waves in June 1846 and June 1887, and windstorms in January 1839 and February 1903.

These meteorological records include Essential Climate Variables that are paramount to characterising Earthâ€™s climate. The majority of the meteorological observations were published daily and often more than once daily. Observed variables include maximum and minimum air temperatures, dry and wet bulb temperatures, rainfall, pressure, wind direction and force, maximum air temperature in the sun, humidity, cloud cover, and state of the weather as qualitative remarks.

The intern will have access to resources, tools, and training in order to complete the required research work. The intern will work as a research assistant and work in collaboration with Dr Mateus to digitise the historical meteorological observations from the images of the original data-sources into a database using Excel. This database will be published in a peer-reviewed data paper in the Geoscience Data Journal and the intern will be a co-author. Additionally, the intern will be added as a co-author in a presentation of the outcomes of this research project at an international conference.

The intern will follow a hands-on and experiential learning work plan:

1. Digitise historical meteorological observations from images of the original data-sources into an Excel database.

2. Interpret the quantitative and qualitative data to characterise past extreme weather events, such as heat waves, cold waves and storms.

The goal of this project is to answer the following research question: What can we learn from historical meteorological observations to better examine past extreme weather events and climate change within a long-term record in Ireland?

References:

Mateus, C., 2021. Searching for historical meteorological observations on the Island of Ireland. Weather, 76(5), pp.160-165.

Mateus, C. and Potito, A., 2022. Long-term trends in daily extreme air temperature indices in Ireland from 1885 to 2018. Weather and Climate Extremes, 36, p.100464.

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