Early meteorological records from Corrientes and Bahía Blanca, Argentina: Initial ACRE-Argentina data rescue and related activities

Abstract

The international Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) initiative works to recover global climate history and build an accessible databank, with data from the past 250 years of terrestrial and marine surface. Argentina is part of that effort with ACRE Argentina recovering data from various sources that have been recorded throughout the country since the 19th century. In this paper, weather observations transcribed from the original records into digital form and taken every day during the years 1860–1879 at Bahía Blanca and from 1873–1886 at Corrientes are presented. The digitization was carried out through the project Meteorologum ad Extremum Terrae (MET) launched in the Zooniverse interface, which is currently working with near 900 citizen scientist volunteers per day. The present analysis corresponds to data retrieved from the collection ‘Anales de la Oficina Meteorológica Argentina’ and contains information on atmospheric pressure, air temperature, relative humidity, cloud cover, cloud types, wind direction, wind speed, rainfall and weather remarks. For the present analysis, only temperature and pressure values, measured in °C and mm of Hg, respectively, were considered, after a quality control of the digitization process was applied. Data values were tested and used to rebuild the time series of both places and correlation with SOI index and monthly pressure values for both places was tested using Spearman correlation. Results show that the influence of El Niño episode during 1877–1878 can be found in the pressure values at Corrientes.