At the Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) in New Orleans last week, one exhibit that particularly astonished me--because I had never heard of such a thing, or the need for it-- was by IEDRO
http://www.iedro.org/ , the International Environmental Data Rescue Organization. There, by himself, was Dr. Rick Crouthamel--a retired meteorologist who started this organization, and continues to run it--as a labor of love. There, in the midst of companies promoting weather satellites, instrumentation, software, etc., with glitzy handouts and other freebies probably paid for by cost-plus government contracts (which can be unbelievable cash cows), was this singular non-profit organization, dedicated to preserving historical weather data--some going back as far as the 1500s, such as that collected by Jesuit priests in Chile--based on the premise that saving weather data saves people--largely in the developing world, where enormous amounts of data are lost every day, simply from the deterioration and destruction of paper records. Here, for example, is the info from IEDRO's "About us" page:
http://www.iedro.org/aboutAbout us
The International Environmental Data Rescue Organization (IEDRO) is an initiative to collect weather information from countries with plentiful and important historical weather data but need help to convert these data into usable digital format.
IEDRO received the 501 (c)(3) non-profit status from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on April 12, 2005. Now, just two years into the work of data rescue, we have been able to make headway in ten countries. They are Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Senegal and Zambia in Africa; and Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Chile and Uruguay in the Americas.
IEDRO is at the forefront for environmental management. We actively search for historical weather data and convert these important data into digitized format for meaningful access by institutes and organizations that use them for the betterment of local and international societies.
Uses of historical data
Data rescue is important because historical weather information is needed for the understanding of past trends in weather changes to forecast and predict future weather.
The understanding of historical weather information by meteorologists and climatologists can result in trend analysis essential for effective agriculture, medicine, engineering and other applications.
If a country's weather service has sufficient historical weather data to forecast upcoming weather, it can provide more accurate information to its people on the onslaught of storms, floods and tidal waves so that people can move to safer grounds before disaster strikes.
Agriculture
In the area of agriculture, historical weather data can provide farmers with forecast weather information that will result in higher crop yield. Forecast weather information is essential because a good harvest can readily increase farmers' income and economic well-being. A crop destroyed from weather disasters will do more harm than just the loss of income for farmers. In poor developing countries that rely on domestic agriculture, destroyed crop will also mean starvation for their own people.
Medicine
In the area of medicine, historical weather data can predict the onslaught of mosquito-spread diseases like malaria, yellow fever and the West Nile Virus. Equipped with such vital information, the health authorities of a country can implement steps to reduce mosquito infestation and implement other preventive measures.
Engineering
In the area of engineering, historical weather data can equip the structural engineer with information that will be useful to determine the composition of building materials for the construction of roads, bridges and buildings. This in turn would ensure that infrastructure can withstand the test of severe weather.
Climate change
In addition, historical weather data collected from all over earth provide our global climate computers with baseline information enabling scientists to better predict seasonal extremes. This will result in more accurate real-time forecasts and warnings. Ultimately, it will also aid in the achieving a better understanding of global change and the validation of global warming.
Truly the uses of historical weather data are countless.
And their Vision and Mission statements:
http://www.iedro.org/organizationVision
Our vision is to rescue and digitize historical environmental data at risk, creating a safer and better global society.
IEDRO is at the forefront of environmental management and is actively searching for historical weather data. Once the data is digitized, it is made available to institutes and organizations for the betterment of local and international societies.
Our mission statement
Our mission is to assist the scientific and educational communities by:
* locating and rescuing weather and other environmental data stored on perishable media;
* digitizing historical environmental data;
* ensuring the digitized data is available for operational and research applications to its host country as well as the international community of scientists.
IEDRO received the 501 (c)(3) non-profit status from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on April 12, 2005. Now, we're making progress in ten countries, which are: Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Senegal and Zambia in Africa, and Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Chile and Uruguay in the Americas.
And more:
http://www.iedro.org/datarescueEnvironmental data rescue
Data needs to be rescued
In the industrialized, developed world, we take data for granted. We own personal computers and access the internet easily from the comforts of our homes. We have access to weather information at the click of a mouse and we manage our lives, plan our activities, according to that weather information.
Yet in many developing countries, good quality digital weather archives cannot be achieved because technology is not easily accessible and because of cost issues. Most of them continue to hold only paper records of thousands of weather readings collected from various sources about rainfall, winds, air pressure, sunrise, sunset and more. IEDRO has found unique data that dates back to the 1500s!!
We need to help countries convert their historical weather information from paper into digital format.
Vital historical weather information cannot be meaningfully employed if they continue to be on sheets of paper, stacked away in boxes, kept away in closed rooms. Yet, this is exactly how historical weather data is being kept in many developing countries.
Where data on paper is properly stored, the success for digitizing the historical information is good. What we need is only time: time to convert this latent information into a digitized and well organized format for meaningful access.
Information on paper run the risk of loss due to mold, mildew, vermin, fire, old age and even weather disasters in developing countries. Deterioration of paper and ink is the biggest challenge IEDRO faces to run against time in our endeavor to rescue historical weather data. We even came to know of cases where historical data were discarded due to the lack of storage space.
Such valuable historical weather data when lost is lost forever. It is irreplaceable. Critical pieces of environmental history are vanishing!
Join IEDRO in our effort to try to save as much as possible, these vanishing historical weather data.
And more:
http://www.iedro.org/datarescue/why_rescue (Check the link to see the associated photographs.)
Why we rescue
Rescuing historic environmental data will do more to prevent humankind's suffering and death than any other endeavor. Only with accurate information about the past can we make the necessary preparations for the future.
Safe building and bridges
Tacoma_bridge_collapse1
Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse
We know the importance of current environmental information. Weather observations allow forecasters to decide if severe weather is expected. But how many realize that weather observations in the past are even more valuable? Historic weather records provide engineers with maximum wind speeds that have been recorded in a certain area so that bridges and buildings can be designed to withstand the wind loads and don't collapse killing people. A long history of observations will ensure the correct mix of strength and economy goes into each structure.
Safety through data rescue
Less starvation
Starving_child
Courtesy of TheWE1.org
Farmers depend on weather forecasts to decide when to plant and harvest. But the history of weather in a region that determines what that farmer can plant. If past weather records show a drought occurs every 10 years, a farmer can save a little each year to make it through the bad year. But how does he/she know the drought occurs about every 10 years? He may have only been farming for 15. This is not a large enough sample size for a good statistical look. The farmer would need ten times the cycle period to be reasonably sure of a bad year one in ten- he would need 100 years of data. Few places in the world have even 30 years of data.
In the developed world, drought means income loss. For most of the world's 1.8 billion subsistence farmers, drought means starvation. There are strains of grain that yield less in average years but produce even in the driest years. If a farmer knows his area is frequently hit with drought, switching to the drought tolerant grain may save his children from starvation. The only way to make an informed decision is to know the climate history.
Starvation prevention through data rescue
Conquering the spread of disease
Mosquito_biting_finger
Disease-carrying mosquito?
Many diseases are air-borne- sometimes carried by mosquitoes. Epidemiologists and entomologists correlate historic weather data with the spread of mosquito-borne diseases such as Malaria, Yellow fever and the West Nile virus. Once the correlation is made, the direction and speed of the spread of a new disease outbreak can be projected by considering wind direction, speed and precipitation. If those historic data were not available, the correlation could never have been made and thousands of children and the elderly would have died.
Disease prevention through data rescue
Understanding Climate Change
Glacier-before Glacier-after
Muir Glacier. The glacier has retreated more seven miles since 1941. The photograph on left was taken 1941, by glaciologist William O. Field. The photograph on the right was taken 2004, by geologist Bruce F. Molnia.
Global warming- do we have time to wait? Is there global warming and if so how bad and why should I be concerned? The debate continues with skeptics saying nothing is happening and alarmists who say global warming will inundate all coastal cities within the next century. The truth is probably somewhere in between.
Many countries of the world are establishing a Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). GCOS consists of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of new observation sites which will be closely monitored over the next century. Countless observations of temperature, humidity, wind direction and speed, pressure, precipitation and sunshine will be carefully added to the climate digital data base. Maybe in 100 years, we'll have enough data to realize it is too late to take corrective actions to stop the ice caps from melting and flooding to kill tens of millions.
Why don't we simply spend one-tenth the GCOS budget and go back in history 100 or 200 and even 300 years and see how the climate has changed since then? Wouldn't that provide us some indication of the validity of global warming in time for us to take some mitigation measures? Sure it would. Why aren't we? Digging through dusty old records in warehouses, barns and offices all over the world is not nearly as glamorous as new high technology that will give us what we need in another hundred years. We have records of temperature, pressure, wind direction and estimated speed back in some areas nearly 300 years - but those data are still on crumbling paper about to disappear forever.
Understanding climate change through data rescue
Going... going... gone!
Waves_breaking1
Storm induced waves inundating a town
It is estimated that there are two to three billion historic weather observations throughout the world, nearly all on deteriorating paper, with nearly one million disintegrating each day - their data lost forever. Ship logs show tides and currents, as well as winds and waves. Other data are found in photographs of glaciers, one of the best ways to measure the change in a region's average temperature. Each piece of old environmental information must be saved on a secure medium and as time and funds allow, digitized for everyones use.
