Unlocking weather observations from the Societas Meteorologica Palatina (1781–1792)

Abstract

In recent years, instrumental observations have Even the shorter series could be ingested into reanalyses and become increasingly important in climate research, allow improve the quality of large-scale reconstructions ing past daily-to-decadal climate variability and weather ex tremes to be explored in greater detail. The 18th century saw the formation of several short-lived meteorological networks of which the one organised by the Societas Meteorologica Palatina is arguably the most well known. This network stood out as one of the few that efficiently managed to control its members, integrating, refining, and publishing measurements taken from numerous stations around Europe and beyond. Although much has been written about the network in both history, science, and individual prominent series used for cli matological studies, the actual measurements have not yet been digitised and published in extenso. This paper repre sents an important step towards filling this perceived gap in research. Here, we provide an inventory listing the availabil ity of observed variables for the 37 stations that belonged to the society’s network and discuss their historical context. Most of these observations have been digitised, and a con siderable fraction has been converted and formatted. In this paper, we focus on the temperature and pressure measure ments, which have been corrected and homogenised.We then demonstrate their potential for climate research by analysing two cases of extreme weather. The recovered series will have wide applications and could contribute to a better under standing of the mechanisms behind climatic variations and extremes as well as the societal reactions to adverse weather.