Antarctic region marine observations for 1895-1915
Belgica 1898-99
Data from The Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897-9 were available as a hardcopy of the book "Voyage S.Y. Belgica 1897-99 Rapports Scientifiques Meteorologie. Observations Horaires", provided by Phil Jones at UEA. The hourly pressure data from this book (pp 2-27), has been digitised and the pressure observations encoded as IMMA records.
- Data as digitised (Excel spreadsheet,Tab delimited text))
- Script to convert to IMMA format (uses this Perl module).
- IMMA records
Problems and limitations
- The book used contains only observations made while the ship was frozen into the ice - voyages to and from Antarctica are not included.
- Only the pressure observations were digitised.
- The book does not contain precise descriptions of the ship's movements. All that were available were the limits of the region in which it had drifted during each month. (For example, in January 1899 the position varied in the ranges 69.83 to 70.60 South and 85.20 to 88.65 West). All the observations for each month have been assigned a position at the centre of this range.
- It is not clear how ship's time relates to GMT (what time-zone were they keeping on board)? The observation times have been converted to GMT assuming a time zone based on the exact longitude of the observation (i.e. the monthly average longitudes used here).