In 1883 a weather observatory was opened on Britain’s highest peak, Ben Nevis. For the next 21 years the summit observatory was manned continuously by three meteorologists, with detailed measurements taken every hour, day and night, throughout the year. This week around 3,600 “citizen-scientists” finished transcribing the 1.5m observations into digital form. “We will be able to better examine particular storms and unusual weather events during the time the observatory was open,” says Ed Hawkins from the University of Reading. The records will also help scientists to understand how wind strength and sunshine have varied over the past century, which could be useful to renewable energy providers.
The remarkable weathermen who lived at the Ben Nevis observatory were often isolated for long periods during the winter months, with only a telegraph cable to keep in touch with the town of Fort William down below. In 1903 their measurements record a terrible storm, mentioned in James Joyce’s Ulysses because it uprooted lots of trees in Ireland. “We can now reconstruct the characteristics of this storm much better because it went right over the top of Ben Nevis,” says Hawkins.
Although the Ben Nevis observations are now complete, the weather rescue project is ongoing, with volunteers now transcribing the Daily Weather Reports; a wider set of daily measurements gathered across Europe from 1900 to the present day.
