The 20^th Century Reanalysis Project will provide missing information about early century extreme climate events, such as the prolonged drought that led to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s

For the first half of the 20^th century, meteorologists, ships' crews, volunteers, military personnel and others collected observational data collected at the Earth's surface. Decades later, scientists still use this data to recreate climate and weather conditions in the past.

Now, using Department of Energy high performance computers Oak Ridge Laboratory, the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project aims to use these early records of surface temperatures, wind speeds and barometric pressures to build the first complete database of atmospheric climate data. The final maps will depict weather conditions every six hours from the Earth's surface to the level of the jet stream from 1871 to present.

With data available for the entire 20^th century, climate researchers hope to improve their models so that they can more confidently predict regional weather trends for the future. They also hope that the dataset will help them learn the cause of important 20^th-century climate events, how today's climate events compare with those of the past (e.g. are there more extreme weather events now compared to the early 20^th century?), the role of human industry in recent weather events and how the 1930s drought compares with later droughts.

Support for the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project dataset is provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (DOE INCITE) program, and Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER), and by NOAA's Climate Program Office.

Read more about the project from a Department of Energy news release.