UK rainfall data digitized by volunteers [Citizen science]

Thanks to @metoffice archives, these sheets were scanned & made openly available, but how could the observations be extracted?

The answer? Ask for help: https://t.co/1Z0LcM7oBN

16,000 volunteers stepped forward during the first UK COVID lockdown to transcribe every observation.

— Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) May 13, 2021

This data will be used by @markpmcc & @metoffice to improve UK rainfall reconstruction (called HadUK-Grid).

Currently the all-UK gridded reconstructions extend back to 1862. With the #rainfallrescue dataset it should be possible to go back to 1836, and earlier for some regions. pic.twitter.com/SXoqUFpYeo

— Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) May 13, 2021

None of this would have been possible without the 16,000+ volunteers, and especially those who have stayed with the project the whole way (Gill, Ian, Jacqui, John B, John O, Mike, Richard, Tim). We also relied on the amazing @the_zooniverse as the citizen science web platform.

— Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) May 13, 2021

We can now map out rainfall for historical extreme months that has never been possible before. For example, the Decembers in 1852 and 1853 were one of the wettest and driest on record for Scotland respectively. pic.twitter.com/LIUwcZNZNc

— Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) May 13, 2021