Changes in global wind patterns since the late 1700s from American whaling ship logbooks and reanalyses

Maritime weather data contained in U.S. whaling ship logbooks are used to assess historical changes in global wind patterns. We focus on unexploited caches of archival documentation, namely U.S. whaling logbooks of voyages spanning the period 1785 to 1910 from New England archives housed by the New Bedford Whaling Museum, Nantucket Historical Association, and Providence Public Library. The logbooks, often covering multi-year voyages around the globe, contain systematic weather observations (e.g., wind strength/direction, sea state, precipitation) at daily to sub-daily temporal resolution. The qualitative, descriptive wind recordings are quantified and compared with reanalysis products where applicable. They are also employed to help address contemporary questions in climate science, such as long-term shifts in position and strength of the Southern Hemisphere westerlies since the late 1700s, changes in characteristics of the subtropical high pressure systems (e.g., Azores High, Mascarene High) and associated circulation regimes in the 19^th century, as well as changes in South Asian monsoon characteristics.

The historical records provide an important long-term context for changing maritime wind patterns in remote ocean regions lacking high-quality observational records. The project is predicated on historical climate data rescue and recovery through the extraction of data from under-utilised archived documentation, and advocating and facilitating the digitisation of such materials.