CLIWOC

Climatological Database for the World's Oceans

Our aim is to discover more about the changing climate over the world' oceans before industrialisation could have had any significant influence on climate and weather. To do this we are calling upon the thousands of naval documents, and in particular logbooks, kept by officers from the 17th century onwards.

Logbooks from before 1850 are to be found in large numbers only in the archives of just four countries - Britain, Holland, France and Spain. These documents tell us much about day-to-day weather in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans, but this is the first attempt by scientists to explore this valuable resource.

The CLIWOC project is an EU-funded research programme designed to abstract, interpret and analyse the data from these sources.

To find out more about our work go to any of the pages listed on the right-hand column of this page.