Old Weather Forum

Sea ice surrounding the Antarctic continent continues to be exceptionally low. Antarctic ice extent as of mid-July is more than 2.6 million square kilometers (1.00 million square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average, an area nearly as large as Argentina or the combined areas of Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado. It is 1.6 million square kilometers (618,000 square miles) below the previous record low extent for the date, set in 2022 (Figure 4a). Low ice extent is present nearly everywhere, but particularly in the northern Weddell Sea, western Ross Sea, and southern Bellingshausen Sea (Figure 4b). Above average extent is prevalent in the Amundsen Sea.

The research community has been discussing the causes for the sudden turnabout in Antarctic sea ice extent, from a weakly positive linear trend from 1978 to 2015 to a strongly negative trend since 2016; and the events of 2022 and 2023 have garnered much attention. Many recent studies point to changing conditions in the upper ocean layer. Warm water from the north has mixed into this layer, which tends to increase the stratification of the ocean. This appears to coincide with when sea ice went from record high extents to low extents beginning in September 2016, and still lower extents in 2023.

Hi everyone,

I thought I would mention something that is not directly related to the study of past weather observations, but involves digitized whaling logbooks and transcriptions, most likely done by Old Weather volunteers.

Yesterday I was listening to Freakonomics, a radio program on NPR, and heard a segment on how two professors used the data pulled from digitized logbooks of whaling ships to study racial diversity and team performance on those ships. If interested, you can listen to the podcast here, starting at around the 17:50 minute mark.

I know that Old Weather volunteers transcribe not only U. S. logbooks but also whaling logbooks, so I thought the Old Weather team would be interested to know that their work was featured in an economics research paper and a popular radio program. That podcast made me wonder whether there are any stories of using the data pulled from U.S. logbooks (Navy, Coast Guard, and Coast and Geodetic Survey ships) for purposes other than the study of past weather records. The only such story I know of is about researchers at Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK, who are using digitized U. S. Navy muster rolls (from the NARA-NOAA partnership) to study race, class and ethnicity in the United States Navy during the Civil War period.

Hi everyone,
...

That podcast made me wonder whether there are any stories of using the data pulled from U.S. logbooks (Navy, Coast Guard, and Coast and Geodetic Survey ships) for purposes other than the study of past weather records. The only such story I know of is about researchers at Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK, who are using digitized U. S. Navy muster rolls (from the NARA-NOAA partnership) to study race, class and ethnicity in the United States Navy during the Civil War period.