Palaeotempestology: Lake sediment records

Digging in to sediment records

With continued debate among scientists on exactly how future climate change will affect storm frequency and severity, it seems logical to see if we can find out more about variability in storm activity from the past.

Lake sediments are extremely useful in studying past climates, for which we have no observational record (through conventional weather recording equipment). They provide a slice through time to look at the changes in lake chemistry and environmental activity affecting the make up of suspended particles in the lake that eventually settle at the bottom.

Radiocarbon dating, thickness of layers of different sediments, analysis of diatoms and inference from the occasional break in the record (a hiatus, perhaps due to the drying out of a lake), are various ways in which lake sediments can give us clues about the past.

Within this range of different approaches there are a few ways in which sediments from lakes can be used to look at past storm events. In my previous blog, I highlighted a paper by Dr Jeff Donnelly et al. in 2015 entitled “Climate forcing of unprecedented intense-hurricane activity in the last 2000 years”. It presents a history of storm events over the past two thousand years, using an analysis of sediment grain size in their collected samples, with a resolution of around 1 year. The work uses evidence gathered from field work during the project (and previous studies) to determine the presence of two distinct periods of higher activity in severe hurricanes for the west North Atlantic coastline of North America: one between 1400 and 1675 C.E.; and another period of high frequency storms further back in time between 250 and 1150 C.E.

The study location is a place called Salt Pond, in Massachusetts. It has a tidal inlet linking it to the ocean, making it full of brackish waters. This proximity to the ocean means that the pond is exposed to ‘overwash’ during storm surge events associated with large storms heading northwards along the Eastern seaboard of the United States. These salt water incursions occur when the storm surge level is higher than any natural or man-made defences. This ‘overwash’ leads to ‘coarse grain event beds’, and so these can be used as an indicator of severe storm activity. This process is vaidated using known hurricanes landfalls, which are represented in the sediment records and act as ‘anchors’ to verify that the samples are valid.

The study builds on a number of papers that were produced after the convening of a workshop on Altlantic palaeohurricane reconstructions in 2001 at the University of South Carolina. The workshop aimed to identify new opportunities in the field of palaeotempestology. A summary of the workshop can be found here. Dr Jeff Donnelly and colleagues studied a number of lakes in the Northeast of the US, in the states of New Jersey and New England, and so to learn a bit about the methodology, I dug into some of the papers in some more depth.

Getting your hands dirty

It seems the only way to get at clues available from sediment records is to get your hands dirty. I found an earlier paper by Donnelly at al. from 2001 which built a 700 hundred year sediment record of severe storms in New England. This paper (and a couple more in Boldt et al. 2010, Liuand Fearn, 2000) started to show me that each project strategy is subtly different. 

Various schemes are planned based on the conditions of the study sites, to find the best locations for sampling overwash areas in a consistent manner. The aim is to try to consistently capture the process by which more intense storms erode more sand from the coastal beach and bring this coarse sediment into the brackish lakes and ponds, larger storms being assumed to produce wider fans of overwash sand deposits, being thicker near the shore and thinner near the centre of the study lake. A range of
samples should be taken to try to represent the range of possible characteristics of past intense storms. Figure 1 (below) is a hypothetical diagram from Liu and Fearn (2000) to show various patterns of deposition. Note the radial patterns associated with the various directions of storm approach, with the larger fans associated with more intense storms.

Figure 1: Hypothetical coarse grain deposition fans in severe storm surge events. Source: Liu and Fearn, 2000 

The coarse sand creates a layer over the more usual organic-based deposits that settle on the bottom of a lake as a stratified layer. This happens most effectively in anoxic lake beds (lacking dissolved oxygen) since any mixing from plant of animal life will be minimal.

Having never been in the field to collect sediment samples, I found it interesting to see how Donnelly et al. (and other teams) maintained a consistent chronology in the sediment records. They took multiple samples and use the variety of methods above to build their chronology.

Markers in time

Isotopic radio carbon dating and stratigraphic markers used to mark certain control points to validate the data. Pollution horizons are useful in this respect, for example lead concentrations mark the beginning of the industrial revolution as it quickly made it's way into the water systems and lakes and then 'fixed' by anoxic sediments. The presence of lead pollution is an indicator of the late 1800's (Donnelly et al. 2001) and then another change occurs when lead was removed from gasoline in the 1970's and 1980's. This is a good example as it shows how these markers are useful for calibrating sediment records, in a way that is easily understood and recognised.

Pollen records can also mark certain points in history, for example the European colonisation of the eastern U.S. led to large scale clearance of the vegetation for farmland meaning that the pollen composition changes drastically (Russell et al. 1993).

Once these markers are established, previous storms are used to calibrate storm events, and then previous coarse grain even layers are identified and carbon dated.

Clear as mud?

So having learned a lot more about sediment analysis in relation to palaeotempestology, I now have a greater respect for what these cores of old mud and sand can tell us about the past. However, it does seem to me that there is still a large degree of uncertainty in the data when trying to discern an idea about individual storms. For example, what if two storm occur in quick succession as a cluster, before a sediment layer has had a chance to settle and ‘lock in’ the information? This may end up looking look like one larger or more intense storm, when actually it is the frequency of storms in that season which is varing. Donnelly et al. 2001 give an example from their study location of a lack of agreement between historical accounts of two intense storms in 1635 and 1638 which likely created overwash signatures, but in the sediment proxy data, only one event was indicated. This means that the estimated frequencies may have significant uncertainty.

Also, responses of lake or pond to overwash events may change over time due to changes in natural or man-made barriers. However, even with these uncertainties in mind, it is still clear that there is great value in understanding the past clues left behind by storms in our coastal lake sediments. 

Without any alternative information, the best that we can do is to piece together palaeotempestological proxies and glean snippets of information to build a longer record of storms.

It also provides grounds for comparison in using climate models to try to understand past variability,
another subject I intend to explore in a future blog.

For now, I’ll leave you with an informational video by Ocean Today in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution and NOAA, just after Hurricane Sandy in 2012 which will hopefully make a clear demonstration of what overwash looks like and how the coastal beach material can be dragged in across to end up in lakes or ponds that lay close to the ocean to give us these markers of past events.

My next blog will be on the evidence that can be derived from coral cores.

Palaeotempestology series: Introduction

In a previous blog, I talked about the various ways in which historical documents, records and anecdotal evidence are used in climatology. I mentioned briefly some of environmental proxies used to derive information about the climate throughout the whole of the Earth’s history using palaeoclimatological techniques. Studying past climates is an essential part of any debate on climate change and there has been a huge amount of science produced in this field both in terms of improved methods and developing datasets.

Depth of data

Ice cores, lake sediments, tree rings records, coral analyses and more, have been conducted around the world for the last few decades to build the picture of past climates that we have today. The National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA) in the U.S. has an online portal and interactive map (Figure 1) that shows the geographical spread of data. I knew there was a lot of data out there but this map really puts into perspective the amount of work that has been done to gather information around the world, but also shows that there are still many gaps and much more that could be done. Check out the Climate Data Online interactive map of palaeo records here.

Figure 1: Screen shot on NOAA's Paleoclimatology interactive map at Climate Data Online. Source: NOAA (https://gis.ncdc.noaa.gov/map/viewer/#app=cdo&cfg=paleo&theme=paleo)

Depth of study

As a snapshot to show the amount of research into palaeoclimatology, a useful list of just one year’s worth of research is compiled here by the team at the 'Skeptical Science' website.

Palaeoclimatological proxies are signatures left behind in the natural environment that can tell us something about the climate in the past. They require detective work and often sophisticated laboratory analysis, but can provide windows into the past to show us data that are otherwise not available.

They are often used to derive at temperature trends over thousands of years from which drought periods can be inferred, or to develop records of past atmospheric composition (useful for revealing changes in greenhouse gas concentrations) but certain proxies can also used to investigate past storm activity.

Pre-historical storm evidence

Since I am obsessed with storms, when thinking about pre-historical records, I couldn’t help but be drawn towards Palaeotempestology (a term coined by Professor Kerry Emanuel at MIT) which is the study of pre-historic storms. In this context 'pre-history' refers to the time before the beginning of observed instrumental record of weather and climate data, which is generally no more than 100-150 years long at best, shorter still if you consider that observations and full representation of all storms that occur has only really been possible since weather has been observed using satellites.

The first satellite used to observe weather conditions was TIROS I, launched on April 1^st 1960 and initially could only tell us some basics about locations of clouds, as analysed by hand. This image below (Figure 2) shows the very first image from this satellite.

Figure 2: The first image sent back from the first satellite used to observe the weather. SOURCE: NOAA/NESDIS

Satellite technology and application has come a long way since then (I’ll likely cover this in a future blog).

Palaeotempestology aims to look back hundreds or even thousands of years, so I’ll take a bit more time on this subject. In my next few blogs, I shall aim to investigate, and share, more on the various sources of data used to drill down in to using sediments (Figure 3), 

Figure 3: Heavy duty sediment core retrieval. Source: NOAA image by Ane Jennings. (ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/slidesets/heinrich/heinrich08.jpg)

swim through the information on coral cores (Figure 4),

Figure 4: SCUBA scientists extracting a core from coral. Source: NOAA image by Maris Kazmers. (ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/slidesets/coral/coral12.jpg)

and circle around the subject of tree rings (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Scientist preparing to take a sample from a Giant Sequoia tree. Source: NOAA image by Peter Brown. (ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/slidesets/treering/tree01.jpg)

Notes on COP21 - follow up interactive infographic

While thinking about the COP21 negotiations in under two weeks, I came across this excellent interactive infographic produced by the World Resources Institute. It shows the various greenhouse gas contributions from different countries, split by sector sources too. 

It's a good quick reference guide when comparing countries that I couldn't resist sharing, as a quick follow up to my previous blog post about the critical meeting in Paris.





I found it at the bottom of an interesting article regarding China's INDC, the article comments on the boldness on China's commitments to a low carbon future. My favourite comment from the article is how the INDC's should be seen as a 'floor' rather than a 'ceiling' on ambition! Hopefully, this advice is heeded at the negotiations.

Notes on COP21

A couple of weeks ago, on the 5^th of November, I attended an evening presentation on COP21. There weren’t any fireworks but it was an illuminating talk, so I thought it would be useful to turn my notes into a blog and discuss the various points raised.

Source: Official COP21 logo

The presentation was by Jesse Scott, from the International Energy Agency (IEA). She's an ex-campaigner and lobbyist who has also worked in civil service in Paris before moving to the IEA.

Initially, she charmed us with her passion for the subject of climate change by describing how, with so many different issues, interests and stakeholders, climate change is simply too interesting to ignore from a political perspective.

She spoke to the audience with authority, about what COP21 actually is, and what it is trying to do. She gave an overview of the science, technology and economic linkages, and then moved on to discuss how COP will work in practice.

She explained it in real terms, and so this worked very well as a primer on 21st conference coming up soon. In this blog, I have used her presentation as the basis of my discussion on the COP21 meeting.

Firstly, a brief overview and history is as follows:

• The Conference of the Parties (COP) meets roughly annually since 1995 (the first held in Berlin - the full list of meetings can be found here) to assess progress dealing with climate change under the UNFCCC and is the decision making body of the framework.
• It was the driving force behind the Kyoto protocol (COP3 in Japan) in which was the first major example of legally binding obligation for developed countries to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions.
• The UNFCCC is comprised of 196 countries and is committed to stabilising greenhouse gas emissions to a level that presents as little danger as possible to the global community.
• Since Kyoto there have been attempts to update the legal obligations, the biggest and most recent attempt was in Copenhagen in 2009 (COP15) which was deemed to be a failure, and unilateral agreements could not be reached.
• Paris is the next big concerted effort to reach binding legal agreements, based on the commitments outlined from each country ahead of the conference in their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) of which most have already been submitted.
• In COP20 and COP19 the decision was taken that these INDCs would be declared before the conference to promote clarity, transparency and understanding of each country’s position and idea of the methods they will chose to tackle adaptation and mitigation strategies.

Recommended Reading

Jesse Scott recommended an article on Christina Figueres inthe New Yorker as an excellent primer on COP21. Ms Figueres is the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC. A transcript of Christina Figueres' speech to the 1st Global Climate Legislation Summit a couple of years ago, expresses how focussed she is on delivering the goals of the UNFCCC and the strength of her advocacy for climate change legislation. She will be blogging through the COP21 so it is worth following her articles. A recent article in the Guardian also shows her optimism for these talks here.

During the presentation, Ms Scott gave us a whistle stop tour of the science (via IPCC) as a precursor to a dialogue on broader governance and political aspects.

A few initial areas she touched upon include:

Procrastination: She also discussed examples of action today being more valuable than responsive action in the future. This reminded me of a often quoted figure regarding resilience which is replicated in various reports but in one case, the UNDP state that for every one dollar spent on disaster preparedness, we save seven dollars on emergency response as highlighted in their #Actnow campaign. This is relevant in a warmed world that may see greater extremes of climate. It also reminds me of the old saying: 'a stitch in time saves nine'. Act now to stop a worse situation in the future.

Technological advances: In recent years, technological advancements have allowed companies to start to realistically consider how to maintain their economic growth trajectories, while investing in sustainable and energy efficient technologies.

Communication: She also talked about the difficulty in communicating risk and uncertainty and described a game developed by Pablo Suarez and his team have designed a game that allows us to experience the difficulty with managing climate risk. Gamification can be an effective way to communicate complex processes.

Climate Justice

Climate Justice is an important and complex principle in the debate on climate change. Climate change doesn't deal out its impacts evenly from a human-centred perspective, as Ms Scott describes, the poor and the young tending to be most vulnerable. Historically, there is also a disparity in that those countries that have a long history of high carbon dioxide emissions, are those who have benefited most, and are most resilience to future impacts. Furthermore, in terms of where the changes are required, the biggest emitters of greenhouse gasses in the past, present and future are argued to be those that need to take most responsibility.

The question of who should do what to mitigate anthropogenic climate change (as we understand it) is a question of science, politics and responsibility, while being reliant largely on metrics. In some respects, it depends how emissions are compared and the political sway of those in power. 

When looked at in the context of the 17 UN sustainability goals, we can consider how different countries and regions will have differing priorities for many of the 17 goals, but with climate change, everyone is a stakeholder and everyone has some exposure to the risk.

Being a trans-boundary and inter-generational challenge means that it requires the concerted and long term commitments and efforts the COP21 is aiming towards.

Mary Robinson (former President of Ireland) was quoted on Climate Justice and human rights summing up that 'Climate Change impacts are biggest on those who have does least to produce them'. Using IPCC parlance, it is extremely likely that this is the case. 

The inter-generational aspects also highlight that those who have made no past contribution to greenhouse gas emission levels (those as yet unborn) will be those feeling impacts of climate change for the longest. 

Some small island nations are starting to plan for the displacement that will be caused by climate change. The Bikini Atoll, a site of nuclear testing in the 1940s and 1950s (and famous for swimwear design) has applied for land in the U.S. to relocate the population due to rising sea levels. 

Source: Getty Images via BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34642692)

Ms Scott affirms, from the perspective of the IEA, that the main solution is to find a way to provide 'clean energy' for everyone. Allowance must be made for the ever-increasing demand for energy in developed countries and the needs for increasing energy to foster development in poorer countries.

Good COP, Bad COP

The talks in Copenhagen in 2009 (COP15) were largely seen as a failure, in that they could not reach binding commitments for countries that have the highest emissions. However, there is reason to be optimistic. Ms Scott describes herself as being ‘very cautiously optimistic’. A lot has changed since 2009:

• The science has moved on, especially through another round of IPCC research.
• Technology is offering new solutions for renewable and efficient energy at a dramatically reduced cost. 
• The U.S. and China governments have steadily shifted towards addressing climate change during the last half a decade, with recent confirmation of their positive intentions on the climate (joint presidential White House statement on September 25th).
• G7 countries addressing climate change in a practical manner, and expressing a feeling of responsibility, as seen here in a White House press summary in June.
• Lessons have been learnt from the difficulties in Copenhagen. There is generally a much brighter outlook on the potential for meaningful and binding agreements being reached, based on the INDCs.
• The Pope has issued a number of statements regarding climate change.
• Mark Carney of the Bank of England has delivered recent speeches regarding climate change and the role of the insurance industry in managing future risks. The ‘1-in-100 initiative’ is an example of how the methods used in insurance industry can benefit both the public and private sectors if adopted more widely in the risk management processes.
• Military interests (e.g. NATO) are concerned regarding their resources in a warmer world. If they need to use their troops for disaster relief after severe events, both home and abroad, then how does that affect their ability to maintain national security - an issue amplified if we can expect changes for the worse in frequency and/or severity of extreme events like floods and storms, as well as migrations and likelihood of conflict through severe droughts. 
• On the public front, celebrity endorsements (for example Leonardo DiCaprio who spoke eloquently at the UN climate change summit last year) have continued and activism continues to put pressure on companies and governments to invest on environmentally responsibly technologies.

INDC - Are all of the cards on the table?

As of last week, 85% of the INDC had been submitted. Hopefully these will be much more robust than previous efforts, focusing of the three elements that are required for any mitigation strategy to work: Monitoring, Reporting, Verification.

It should be noted that these INDCs are self-defined, and so the cynic in me suspects that they may be quite lenient, but equally, there is probably little alternative to this approach as every country will have different processes and issues that need to be understood so they can action their obligations. The sum of the INDCs should add up to one global agreement that is achievable within the context of each nation - not easy to achieve.

If the details of the INDCs were not country specific it would be very difficult to find common ground. For example, in terms of monitoring, there is the question of which metric to use. Per capita CO2 emission may favour China, with such a large population, but would this be representative with such a huge disparity between the high and low (rich and poor respectively) emitters?

Would using per capita metrics put countries other countries at a disadvantage? Using absolute (total) emissions would conversely perhaps put China at a disadvantage, being top of the worst offenders list?

This type of conversation will no doubt be had during the negotiations.

Disclaimer

I'm still getting to grips with the angles of the politics of climate change (luckily I'll be studying it more specifically next term), but this talk certainly helped me gain deeper appreciation of the complexity and importance of the COP21 meeting. If there is anything in this blog with which you disagree or looks to be misunderstood, then feel free to comment and let me know.  Most likely, it is due to me being new to thinking about these negotiations in depth so I'm eager to learn more.

Everyone is a stakeholder in looking after our climate and developing a sustainable environment, and that also means that there are lots of different opinions and views. I agree with Jesse Scott that it really is a fascinating topic to study.

A final word
I wrote most of this blog last week, but between then and posting, the tragic events in Paris have unfolded. My thoughts are with the families and friends of those directly affected and the people of Paris as they recover from this despicable and horrific act. The Foreign Minister of France, Laurent Fabius, has a short quote on the home page of COP21 today, saying simply:

“The COP is maintained”

Great Scott! 'Doc' Brown harnesses lightning using historical climatology!

Just over a couple of weeks ago, on October 21st, it was the 30th anniversary of the release of legendary sci-fi 80's classic ‘Back to the Future’.

If you like the film, you'll no doubt remember Emmett 'Doc' Brown - the mad scientist who builds a time machine (housed in a DeLorian sports car). Our hero, Marty McFly, gets stuck in the past and has to work out how to get ‘Back to the Future’. Upon reminiscing on this film, it occurred to me that when 'Doc' refers to himself as “a student of all sciences” he is including historical climatology. 

***SPOILER ALERT***

In the film, they need to find an energy source big enough to power the time-travelling DeLorian back in the 1950's. ‘Doc’ notices a “Save the Clock tower” flyer from the future, showing exactly when a lightning strike will hit the town's clock tower, which coincidentally, is set to happen in just a few days time. Madcap shenanigans ensue, but they end up performing the ultimate in verification of their historical climatological evidence when they manage to take advantage of this information to harness the power of the lightning strike, to send Marty back to the future!

Marty's flyer in "Back to the Future". Source: http://backtothefuture.wikia.com/wiki/Clock_Tower_flyer

This is actually a pretty good (fictional) example of how evidence derived from human society might relate to past weather records, especially for extreme or newsworthy events. Much of the uncertainty in the detail of how our climate has changed is down to a lack of data, and so using new sources of information is an important element of any discussion on climate change. 

With that thought in mind, for this blog, I have investigated historical climatology to study climate through human history (the Anthropocene), and how it may be used to support palaeoclimatological data which differs in that it studies climate throughout the history of the Earth.

It’s how you tell ‘em

In general, from checking a number of definitions, anecdotal evidence differs to scientific evidence in that it cannot be proven or disproven using scientific means. Historical climatology generally only stretches back a few thousand years too, since it focuses on the study of climate through representations in human historical evidence. The goal of a historical climatologist is to use what evidence can be gleaned from anecdotal and more official human records to infer observations about the climate. A good background of the different sources of historical climatological data was put together by Phil Jones in 2008. Data sources include:

• old news paper reports and photographs,
• mariner’s reports,
• town hall records,
• agricultural records,
• old maps,
• and one I am particularly intrigued by and probably more appealing than most other sources of ‘data’, the use of old paintings, and even cave paintings.

Here are some great old pictures (collated by ITV from PA) of the cold winter of 1963 in the UK, with parts of the River Thames apparently frozen. And further back still, here’s an old painting from 1683 of a Frost Fair,

Thames Frost Fair, 1683-84, by Thomas Wyke. Source: Wikipedia.com

and another from 1677 of the Thames freezing over with London Bridge in the background by Abraham Hondius.

The Frozen Thames, 1677, by Abraham Hondius. Source: Wikipedia.com

There are many depictions of cold weather through the 17th Century that coincide with the “Little Ice Age” and therefore it might seem to be a causal link. However, a lot has changed since the 17th Century. The river Thames for example was wider and shallower in places, and human structures such as the various bridges and flood defences, would have also affected river flow differently, perhaps allowing for freezes to occur in the past.

In short, many other factors determine whether a river freezes over, aside from temperature alone. I was asked about whether the Thames could freeze again while working as a weather forecaster, just a few years ago with the cold winter in 2010, and the question normally crops up during any cold winter season, as it certainly captures the imagination whenever freezing weather arrives in London. There is more on this subject at RealClimate.org here. This article goes on to describe how one of the most useful applications of anecdotal evidence is in the assessment of glacial retreat and ice melt.

Cool photographic evidence

A recent paper in Nature by Anders A. Bjørk et al. in 2012 uses 80-year old photographs of southeast Greenland to gain an insight into glacier and ice cover before satellite data became available. Photography offers greater ability to measure and analyse than an artistic impression, and so in this way, this paper was able to characterise some glacial responses over recent decades and link them to external forcings. It discusses how the warming in air and sea surface temperature led to rapid glacial retreats, but the study also notes that those glaciers that stop over the sea may respond faster than those terminating on land. A good article here covers the paper also.

Proxy validity?

It is important to validate any proxy information so, where data is sparse, alternatives should be considered. Historical climatology plays a part here, and can provide useful evidence if properly analysed. The main use would be to validate scientifically derived climate information from sources that can extend further back in through antiquity and beyond. By providing analogues (periods or events when both datasets agree), historical climatology might help to give validity and confidence to other datasets such as palaeoclimatoloical proxies. The main sources of palaeoclimatological records include:

• ice cores (essentially compacted snow over millennia is examined and useful information can be extruded using thickness of layers and the analysis of trapped air to find and measure oxygen isotopes, pollen or volcanic ash)
• tree rings (dendroclimatology can provide information on growth rates of different tree species which allows us to deduce information about the climate),
• corals (sclerochronology is essentially like using tree rings, but different variables of the atmosphere and oceans are represented),
• sediment layers in lakes.

Related to my main topic of storms, lake sediments can be used in to measure storm activity in the past. The method is quite opportunist and cannot be applied everywhere (perhaps a bit like anecdotal evidence in that respect) but basically involves using lakes that routinely hit by storms, or storm surge, and measuring indicators of erosion from flooding and/or incursions of sea water that build up, into the sediment layers, over the years.

There are numerous studies that infer storm and flood rates and intensities from lake sediments such as Gilli et al. in 2013, Vermaireet al. in 2012, and Page et al. in 1994. Through using lake sediments to look at salt water incursions, one recent paper by Donnelly et al. published in February this year, suggests that pre-historic storms (before the mid-1800s) on the NE coast of the US were more intense than anything we have seen in the historical records. It seems that this is a chief proxy for looking into palaeotempestology. This has peaked my interest, so I’ll be looking at lake sediments and storm surge again in more detail in future blogs.

Everyone loves a good story

I have learnt that evidence analysed by climate historians is difficult to link with the more scientifically collected evidence from palaeoclimatological proxies, but it can provide a degree of verification if used carefully as discussed above. Some cases, such as using old painting and photographs, certainly capture the imagination easily, and old mariner’s reports and documentary accounts can be equally compelling. Perhaps its power is also effectively focussed on public engagement, allowing a narrative and immediacy that many graphs and figures do not. I’m sure the idea of science communication and engagement will come up again in my blog as I do find it fascinating.

New sources of weather data

So aside from Doc Brown using historical evidence in the form of an old flyer, Anders A Bjørk using old photos to study glaciers, and palaeoclimatologists using a whole host of proxies for peering further back in time through the ages, I’ve also wondered what types of past evidence there will be in the future, aside from our ongoing weather observations network. In a world of Big Data, there is plenty of unverified but still potentially valuable data around. With the dawn of the internet, we have become able to share and consume data from virtually anywhere on the planet.

Social media and smart phone technology provides unprecedented accessibility to environmental data. “Citizen Science” crowdsourcing projects such as mPING from the National Severe Storms Laboratory, or the Met Office's Weather Observations Website (WOW) provide portals for the general public to upload weather reports that can be used to improve forecasting.

mPING report data. Source: NSSL mPING website.

These are not calibrated observations by professional staff or sensitive equipment, but they do potentially provide a coverage and density of data points that cannot be matched by conventional ground-based weather observing. Calibration can be performed, by using other sources of data such as radar, satellite imagery and more credible weather stations. It is the hoped that this kind of data can provide better information on extreme weather events in the future.

Back to the beginning

But thinking back to the storm that started this line of enquiry - the fictional thunderstorm that hit the small fictional town of Hill Valley - it’s easy to find ourselves a little envious of ‘Doc’ and Marty. I find myself musing that if we had the time-travelling DeLorian, we could go back to verify as much historical or palaeoclimatological data as we want. Better yet, we could even warn our past selves that climate change would become such a major global issue, and advise ourselves that we should at least start thinking seriously about a more sustainable future.

Although, as we know from most films involving time travel, things always go wrong when you start messing around with the past. Perhaps, it’s best that we must stick to learning what we can from what’s left behind for us to find.