Slonosky, V;
Mayer-Jouanjean, I;
(2020)
Climate Observing During Canada’s Empires, 1742–1871:
People, Places and Motivations.
London Journal of Canadian Studies
, 35
(1)
pp. 1-28.
10.14324/111.444.ljcs.2020v35.002.
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Abstract
A wealth of pre-Confederation weather and climate observations were recorded in Canada by individuals and institutions during both the French and British empires. This scientific heritage came about for a number of reasons. For instance, the Hudson’s Bay Company wanted to reduce operating costs by having their posts in Canada’s north-west become self-sufficient in agriculture. Others wished to save lives from cholera or shipwrecks, or to satisfy curiosity about the ever-present debate concerning anthropogenic climate change. Today, historical climate observations can be found in many diverse locations. Despite our rich scientific heritage, turning archival paper and ink observations into scientific data remains an enormous technical challenge. This challenge falls to our generation, both to use this heritage to investigate the historical context of current climate change and variability, and to use the digital resources in development today to safeguard our scientific heritage for future generations.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Climate Observing During Canada’s Empires, 1742–1871: People, Places and Motivations |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.14324/111.444.ljcs.2020v35.002 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.ljcs.2020v35.002 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2020, Victoria Slonosky and Isabelle Mayer-Jouanjean. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC-BY) 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited |
| Keywords: | Historical climatology, history of weather, history of climate |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10124547 |
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