A CALL has gone out for volunteers to come forward and help digitise historic records that will help our understanding of nuclear bomb tests.
A University of Reading professor rediscovered information from the Lerwick Observatory in the Shetlands, and needs to get the paperwork converted into digital form so they can studied on computers.
To do this, Prof Giles Harrison and his team at the Atomospheric Physics department on the Whiteknights campus, are looking for people to step up and transcribe the information from the Lerwick Observatory that previously captured radioactivity spikes from nuclear bomb tests.
The data goes from 1925 to 1984, and saw staff record measurements of electricity in the air every hour. These values need inputting into a database.
The reason the University needs help is there are around 500,000 entries.
It will go into AtmosEleC, a project that aims to develop our understanding of how electricity in the air is connected to climate variations.
The university says the digitisation of this data will enable scientists to learn more about how the climate has changed.
Each thunderstorm across the world contributes a part of the total electric current that always flows in the atmosphere. This net current flow, and how it varies hour by hour over the day, was monitored at Lerwick.
As the climate changes, the global thunderstorms change in their position and intensity, which is reflected in the data. Atmospheric electricity data is independent and complementary to climate data, so it provides additional information with which to test climate modelling.
It also shows the effects that nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s had on the Shetland environment.
Scientists found that the records of electricity in the air changed dramatically after nuclear bomb tests in the early 1960s. At first, this was a mystery, but they eventually established it was because of radioactive particles that fell to the ground near the observatory, after the distant bomb tests.
This discovery demonstrated how atmospheric transport of radioactivity material occurred over long distances.
Prof Harrison said: “Finding the forgotten material in an Oxford library, visiting Lerwick observatory to understand how the measurements were made and then discovering links to modern climate questions has been remarkable.
“There are about half a million entries to process. To truly unlock the opportunities from this incredible data, we need the help of dedicated volunteers to transcribe these records and make them accessible for the future.
“Volunteers will play a crucial role in advancing our understanding of the complex relationship between atmospheric electricity, climate change, and even the impact of historical events like nuclear bomb tests.
“This is a unique opportunity for people to be a part of a pioneering scientific project that has already provided new insights into climate variations, and we expect it to provide many more.”
To learn more about the AtmosEleC project and how you can help as a volunteer, visit the project website, https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/hripsi-19/atmoselec-atmospheric-electricity-for-climate
