The interdisciplinary workshop is bringing together researchers from history, the social sciences and arts, and climate science to try and develop a strategy for the digitisation and dissemination of the British Library's 9 miles of records from the India Office.
As many contemporary climate and weather records do not extend back far beyond 1850 - measurements and observations taken by sea-farers, plantation owners, botanical surveyors, medics, and other 'characters' from the 17th and 18th centuries can provide access to otherwise unavailable information climatic conditions around the globe. However, the arts, humanities and social sciences need to play a vital role in determining the contexts in which the measurements were made, and therefore there likely accuracy, as well as finding a wider set of uses for them beyond their use in historical climate reconstructions
