Rescue of Climate Data at the Slovenian Environment Agency

The Slovenian Environment Agency (ARSO) has dedicated significant effort over the past twenty years to systematically climate data rescue in Slovenia. This data rescue activity will continue with the launch of the national project “SOVIR-Upgrade of the system for early warning and awareness-raising to weather-related emergencies and adaptation to them in a changing climate”. In the project, logbooks and reports will be imaged, the data will be keyed, and a document database will be established.

The goal is to create long-term time data series  for various climate analyses, preserve this observed data for future generations, ensure its easy accessibility and align our data management and archiving procedures with national legislation and the guidelines set by the WMO.

The results of the systematic data rescue activities up to this point are as follows:

• An inventory of Slovenian meteorological reports has been created. This inventory includes historical climate reports stored in the ARSO and foreign archives. The inventory of Slovenian reports held in foreign archives is accessible on the EUMETNET DARE program's website. In the ARSO archive, meteorological reports spanning 400 running meters, including reports dating back to 1850.
• Reports from 61 Slovenian stations, dated from 1849 to 1944, have been digitized from GeoSphere’s archive. In addition, reports for 70 Slovenian stations, dated from 1920 to 1947, have been imaged from ISPRA’s archive.
• Historic meteorological data for Ljubljana, covering the years 1818 to 1856, has been recovered from digitized copies of the newspaper "Laibacher Zeitung", and this data has been keyed.
• An inventory of meteorological station metadata has been conducted, including imaging of the documents and updating of the metadata database.
• Most of the climate data from 1950 onward has been keyed into a database and it is publicly accessible on the website.
• ARSO has established close cooperation with the National Archives.

The data rescue activities planned for the “SOVIR”, project in 2025–2026 include the following:

• Professionals will image climate logbooks, precipitation reports, pluviograms, barograms, thermograms, and hygrograms, totaling over 5,5 million pages, dating from 1850 to 2023.
• Experts will perform data keying for reports and logbooks from 1850 to 1949.
• ARSO experts will conduct quality control of the data.
• A document database will be created, consisting of over 700,000 files and requiring approximately 5 TB of storage.
• A scanner will be acquired to facilitate future imaging tasks.
• All activities will comply with national legislation regarding archives and archiving practices.
• After digitization, logbooks and reports will be transferred to the National Archives, requiring approximately 200 running meters of space. An additional 200 running meters of meteorological reports will be stored in the ARSO archive.