Yesterday’s weather for tomorrow’s climate.
The great maritime explorers of the last few centuries are long gone, but their observations live on in the yellowing pages of their log books. By digitising these records, climate scientists around the world have access to a more complete picture of the climate hundreds of years ago, so they can better predict what will happen now, at this crucial phase in human history. Old Weather uses the unique human skills of pattern recognition and detection to recover weather records from our past, which are used in climate models to predict and understand our future. It combines an elegant interface, a unique social element and the power of the crowd to create a rewarding experience for every user.
The human eye is often mightier than the computer; recognising patterns in hand writing is second nature to us, but often extremely difficult for computers. To get hundreds or thousands of people to lend their eyes and pattern recognition talents, we needed to build a rewarding experience. The beautiful visualisations and the social recognition of efforts keep people on board.
Climate change is one of the key issues of our time. Contributing to the science and our understanding of it could help improve our models, so we can prepare for what’s to come. That kind of impact is why we love working on these kinds of projects.
What are people saying about it?
Next project.
Global Forest Watch.