Climate of the Past
Climate of the Past
CP
Articles | Volume 17, issue 1
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:
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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Cited articles

Adamson, G. C. D.: Private diaries as information sources in climate research, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews, Climate Change, 6, 599–611, https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.365, 2015. 
Allan, R., Endfield, G., Damodaran, V., Adamson, G., Hannaford, M., Carroll, F., Macdonald, N., Groom, N., Jones, J., Williamson, F., Hendy, E., Holper, P., Arroyo-Mora, J. P. P., Hughes, L., Bickers, R., and Bliuc, A.-M. A. M.: Toward integrated historical climate research: The example of Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews, Clim. Change, 7, 164–174, https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.379, 2016. 
Archer, D. R. and Fowler, H. J.: Characterising flash flood response to intense rainfall and impacts using historical information and gauged data in Britain, J. Flood Risk Manage., 11, S121–S133, https://doi.org/10.1111/jfr3.12187, 2018. 
Ayre, M., Nicholls, J., Ward, C., and Wheeler, D.: Ships' logbooks from the Arctic in the pre-instrumental period, Geosci. Data J., 2, 53–62, https://doi.org/10.1002/gdj3.27, 2015. 
Barrow, E. and Hulme, M.: Climates of the British Isles, Taylor and Francis, 2014. 
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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.
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International methods and comparisons in climate reconstruction...