Evaluating the utility of qualitative personal diaries in precipitation reconstruction in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Harvey-Fishenden, Alice; Macdonald, Neil

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-133-2021

Articles | Volume 17, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-133-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

International methods and comparisons in climate reconstruction...

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-17-133-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 1

Research article

|

14 Jan 2021

Research article |

| 14 Jan 2021

Evaluating the utility of qualitative personal diaries in precipitation reconstruction in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Alice Harvey-Fishenden and Neil Macdonald

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Final revised paper (published on 14 Jan 2021)
Preprint (discussion started on 22 Jul 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Evaluating the utility of qualitative data in precipitation reconstruction in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries', David Nash, 10 Aug 2020
- AC1: 'Response to Referee 1 (David Nash)', Alice Harvey-Fishenden, 21 Aug 2020
RC2: 'refree comment (cp-2020-90)', Anonymous Referee #2, 13 Aug 2020
- AC2: 'Response to Referee 2', Alice Harvey-Fishenden, 21 Aug 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (22 Sep 2020) by Sam White

AR by Alice Harvey-Fishenden on behalf of the Authors (03 Nov 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (10 Nov 2020) by Sam White

AR by Alice Harvey-Fishenden on behalf of the Authors (13 Nov 2020)

Short summary

This paper evaluates the utility of personal diaries in precipitation reconstruction and value of multiple overlapping diaries for producing a more objective record. Through analysis of >27 500 daily weather descriptions, we demonstrate that indices derived from such qualitative sources can create valuable precipitation records, with potential for this methodology to be applied to earlier material or in areas without extant instrumental records to address spatial and temporal gaps in knowledge.