Weather forecasting has always been a primary concern for boaters, who nowadays rely on all kinds of sensors and satellites to try and stay ahead of storms. But is it possible that in addition to looking at new technology for better forecasts, we should also be looking backward in time? As it turns out, some of the information we need to improve today’s forecasts could actually be buried in the pages of handwritten logbooks from whaling ships that date to 1780.
That’s the theory behind a research project led by Timothy Walker, a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and Caroline Ummenhofer, a climate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Together with their
