Discover: Dennis Wheeler - Jolly Jack Tars and Jet Streams: Our Climate Past, Present and Future - TONIGHT Murray Library Lecture Theatre, City Campus Monday, March 10, from 7pm This talk is free – contact [email protected] or via the University Online Store: onlinestore.sunderland.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=1&deptid=70&catid=24&prodid=1567&searchresults=1 As part Discover 2014, and celebrating Climate Week 2014, Dr Dennis Wheeler, Visiting Professor of Climatology, will talk about how the University of Sunderland has taken a lead role in recent years in the use of documentary sources for studying global climate change over the past three centuries. The research team have made extensive use of Royal Navy and other ship’s logbooks as British vessels navigated the world’s ocean dutifully recording the weather as they did so. This lecture will talk about such work and how it relates to many current concerns about climate change and, especially, the highly topical question of the jet stream. The ARCdoc research project, led by the University of Sunderland, analyses ships’ logbooks of explorers, whalers and merchants to increase our scientific understanding of climate change. The logbooks include famous voyages such as Charles Darwin’s voyages on the Beagle, Cook’s HMS Discovery, Parry’s polar expedition in HMS Hecla and Sir John Franklin’s lost journey to navigate the Northwest Passage. Ships’ logbooks were the main resource used to record the weather in the oceans for the years before regular instrumental observations began to be made in the mid-19th century. Officers kept careful records of the daily, and sometimes hourly, climate conditions with the result that we are now able to determine weather from many parts of the globe from distant times using the rich data from the logbooks that have survived the centuries. Dr Wheeler will open up this fascinating world, and show how these almost forgotten historical archives could predict future weather changes. Free and open to all.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 09:29:50 +0000
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