Germany to digitize 19th-century sailing-ship weather logs : Technology

German Capital - Germany's federal meteorologists are to digitize a alone aggregation of weather condition logs from German seafaring ships and steamboats cruising the world's oceans in the 19th and 20th centuries, an functionary said Monday. The information is valuable as it will assist long-term upwind prediction and surveys of planetary warming.

The German weather condition service DWD bes after to scan electronically more than than 37,000 logbooks in its Hamburg library as a first measure to digitizing the information on wind, temperature and violent storms on the seven seas since the first one-half of the 19th century.

Transcribing the logs from these mental images will necessitate particular preparation in reading old handwriting, said Wilfried Thommes, a member of the DWD board. He said impairment of the paper they are written on meant the undertaking had to travel ahead.

"Climate surveys are dependent on this data," he said. Federal Republic Of Germany still continuously accumulates worldwide clime information from about 800 merchandiser ships which direct in weather condition studies by wireless.