Australia Weather News

Hidden for more than a century, a remarkable collection of Australian and Antarctic history has been revealed to the public for the first time.

The Royal Society in London has launched a digital archive of more than 50,000 meteorological images spanning three centuries.

It includes weather observations by Louis "Bunny" Bernacchi, the only Australian on Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton's Discovery expedition to Antarctica in the early 1900s.  

The archive features photographs, notebooks, images and charts, offering a rare glimpse into both the science of the expedition and the people who carried it out. 

"You actually get to see what they're doing on a daily basis," Royal Society historian Louisiane Ferlier told the ABC.

"Especially the mid-winter celebrations when they just have their beer and they have done the bunting themselves, they've decorated all of the mess … you can actually see they're trying to just go through the very dark winter months."

The collection also reveals how Mr Bernacchi came to join the expedition.

The Tasmanian was not the first choice.

"One of the archives that we have here is a letter by the physicist who had been chosen to go on the Discovery expedition," Dr Ferlier said.

"He was dismissed, supposedly because of his teeth. He's quite adamant that his teeth are actually fine … and says, is it personal?" she laughed.

Whatever the reason, his dismissal opened the door for Mr Bernacchi to make history.

Now, the public can access his observations, diagrams and photographs online, thanks to almost 10 years of digitising work by Royal Society historians. 

Frozen thermometers, hangover-induced errors

While the Discovery expedition was scientifically groundbreaking, the collection shows its scientists struggled on the ground.

In some cases, thermometers froze over.

In others, the instruments were misused.

"All of the instruments that were designed in Britain had never been in those conditions, so it was necessary for science to actually try to see how they would perform," Dr Ferlier said.

Antarctica's brutal conditions explained some gaps in the data, but Dr Ferlier said other mistakes came down to human error.

"You can see gaps in the observations … for instance, they were celebrating midwinter and they were too drunk to take the observations, but also gaps in when they're forgetting to just replace a roll," she said.

While the errors rendered some of their work unusable, the expedition gathered reams of invaluable data still useful today.

Historical weather observations feature in archive

The Discovery expedition is just one of many scientific projects featured in the new online archive, with the oldest records dating back as far as 1706.

The Royal Society historians told the ABC they believed the collection included the earliest meteorological record made in Australia: a book of weather observations taken on board a ship in Port Jackson in 1788.

Dr Ferlier said that predated other Australian weather records by about 50 years.

The archive also featured a Meteorological Register for 1840 from Port Arthur, Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), painstakingly filled out by Thomas James Lempriere.

The register showed a table of daily observations including barometric pressure, temperature and wind direction.

Presented as a dodecagon, every very tiny square represented one observation for one day throughout the course of the year.

Antarctic weather data shaping modern understanding

The newly digitised collection does not just include original records, but scientists' interpretations of them in the 18th and 19th centuries. 

Taken together, they have helped modern day scientists understand how the past informs the present.

"Scientists can now use the data … and look at what the models are doing and whether the historical data confirms what they're doing backwards, which is called reanalysis," Dr Ferlier said.

"You have scientists in Australia in particular who have been looking at those records, looking at going as far back as they can to try reconstruct the historical weather — not just to compare, but to understand the trends in the long term.

"So they are really useful records with scientists today."