National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration
United States Department of Commerce

What's New

In the Crow's Nest, watching for a 'blow'. "Thar she blows". Photo courtesy of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

December 03, 2015

Citizen scientists have a new opportunity to help reconstruct past climate by transcribing data from whaling ship logs. A massive collaboration among government and university scientists, archivists and museum curators, has unveiled Old Weather: Whaling, a sister project of Old Weather that is focused on the Pacific Arctic whaling industry that began in 1849. Volunteers mine massive amounts of sea-ice and weather data from the ship’s logs -- along with amazing stories of the Arctic whalemen. These data are fed to state-of-the-art retrospective analysis (reanalysis) systems and provide ground-truth for sea-ice and climate models, all contributing toward better understanding of the Arctic climate of the future.

Read more about Old Weather and Old Weather: Whaling as well as feature stories on NOAA Research and UW Today from the University of Washington.

PMEL in the News

December 04, 2015

Even if climate negotiations in Paris are successful, the planet is locked into long-term warming and an uncertain future. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.

December 03, 2015

Today marks the official launch of Old Weather: Whaling, a citizen science research initiative that will help scientists analyze historical data from whaling logbooks.