Thermal conditions on the coast of Labrador during the late 19th/early 20th century

Abstract

The late 19th/early 20th-century Moravian missionary observations offer an exclusive perspective on the climate of the Labrador coast, providing essential data on air temperature, air pressure, cloud cover, precipitation and wind patterns and short descriptions of the weather from observations made three or five times a day. This study focuses on the analysis of air temperature conditions in Labrador's coastal region using invaluable instrumental meteorological observations, which were carried out by Moravian missionaries on behalf of the Deutsche Seewarte. These data records are sourced from Deutscher Wetterdienst (Germany). Long continuous series of sub-daily temperature series (from 7 to 36 years) are available for six stations: Rama (1882–90), Hebron (1882–1918), Okak (1883–89), Nain (1882–1913), Zoar (1882–94) and Hoffenthal (1882–98). The sub-daily data will be used to calculate mean daily air temperature (MDAT) using the simple arithmetic mean. Such calculated MDATs will be corrected to the real mean. The corrected MDAT data will be used to calculate standard climate statistics (monthly, seasonal and yearly means, day-to-day temperature variability, thermal seasons, etc.) as well as to calculate indices such as growing degree days (GDDs), air thawing index (ATI), positive degree days (PDDs) and air freezing index (AFI) degree days.The ther mal conditions of the study period in the coastal part of Labrador will be compared to present-day ones. The analysis improves the knowledge about the region's climate variability during the early instrumental period.