Nsfgeo-nerc: reconciling early 20TH century antarctic and southern ocean meteorological dataset disparities through enhanced data recovery and analysis

The National Science Foundation Division of Polar Programs awarded Ohio University $501,599 on September 1, 2026, under the Polar Programs grant program (CFDA 47.078) to digitize approximately 2 million observations of temperature, pressure, and winds recorded in merchant ship logbooks from the early 20th century, with over 1 million observations from south of 55° South latitude. Work will continue through August 31, 2029, at Ohio University's location in Athens, Ohio.

The project addresses significant gaps in Antarctic and Southern Ocean meteorological data. Most Antarctic weather observations began during the International Geophysical Year of 1957–1958, leaving global gridded temperature and pressure datasets with dramatically reduced quality south of 55° South before 1960. Early 20th century reconstructions contain substantial disparities due to scarce direct measurements. The newly digitized merchant ship observations will fill regions where essentially no data exist, providing enhanced constraint on parameters such as global mean temperatures in the early 20th century and improved tools for analyzing Antarctic environmental change. This is a joint U.S.–UK project funded through the NSF/GEO–NERC Lead Agency Opportunity, in which each agency funds the proportion of the budget supporting scientists at institutions in its respective country.

Abstract

This is a project jointly funded by the national science foundation?s directorate for geosciences (NSF/GEO) and the national environment research council (nerc) of the united kingdom (UK) via the NSF/GEO-nerc lead agency opportunity. This opportunity allows a single joint US/UK proposal to be submitted and peer-reviewed by the agency whose investigator has the largest proportion of the budget. Upon successful joint determination of an award recommendation, each agency funds the proportion of the budget that supports scientists at institutions in their respective countries. Antarctica and the surrounding southern ocean remain one of the most poorly monitored regions of the world. Most antarctic weather observations began during the international geophysical year of 1957-1958, with only a few measurements prior, usually from temporary bases and early discovery and scientific expeditions. With very little data to constrain them, global data products like gridded temperature and pressure datasets, thus have dramatically reduced quality south of 55?s before 1960. The lack of observational data also poses significant challenges for interpreting ongoing complex and rapid antarctic environmental changes, complicated further by substantial differences in the early 20TH century reconstructions prior to direct measurements. To overcome these barriers, this project will digitize roughly 2 million new observations of temperature, pressure, and winds recorded in merchant ship logbooks from the early 20TH century, of which over 1 million are from south of 55?s latitude. These new observations will fill in gaps where essentially little to no data exist, providing a new tool to analyze the antarctic environment and better constrain parameters like global mean temperatures in the early 20TH century. As such, these newly recovered data sources will give society the resources IT needs to understand and interpret century-scale variations in antarctic weather better than previously possible. The main project objective is to produce new methods to ensure successful data recovery, whereby the project team will use knowledge from previous experience and a range of collaborators to implement a recovery scheme that simultaneously employs manual key entry, an expansion of a previously successful citizen science campaign, and the deployment of modern machine learning technology to automate data recovery. Once the data are recovered into a database, our second objective will further expand their impact by creating new, multiple gridded datasets through coupled and uncoupled offline data assimilation using a variety of background states (priors) to estimate uncertainty. The final project objective will reformat all recovered data for their assimilation into future generations of gridded reanalyses and temperature datasets. These new data records at daily to sub-daily temporal resolution will extend records of key features like the amundsen sea low, zonal wavenumber three, antarctic temperature variation and extremes, or the southern annular mode, transforming our understanding of the longer term evolution of antarctica and the southern ocean. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.- subawards are not planned for this award.