University of Freiburg

tambora.org

Reconstruction of the climate of past centuries from historical sources

About the project

tambora.org is a collaborative research environment for climate and environmental history. It is open to anyone interested in reconstructing the following from man-made sources (e.g. chronicles, flood marks, ship diaries): 

  • Weather and climate 
  • Geophysical, astronomical and other environmental events
  • Effects on societies and their response mechanisms. 

The focus of tambora.org is on historical climatology. Years of meticulous work in research groups worldwide have enabled the development of large data collections on different climatic parameters such as temperature, precipitation, storms, floods, etc., with different spatial, temporal and thematic focuses. tambora.org allows researchers to interpret information obtained from historical sources collaboratively. The research environment includes a database of original citations, bibliographic information, extracted location and time information, and climatic coding. Existing data collections can be integrated into tambora.org and sustainably secured; new data can be registered via a graphical interface.

The system already contains several data collections and continues to grow. Everyone is invited to contribute data. In addition, tambora.org offers various tools to facilitate data acquisition and visualisations. In recognition of scientific achievements, tambora.org supports the allocation of citable DOIs (digital object identifiers) for recorded data collections by providing the necessary infrastructure and ensuring institutional responsibility for quality control.

Objectives

Establishment and operation of a collaborative research environment for the reconstruction of the climate of past centuries from historical sources.

Funding

Funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) for 24 months.

Project partners

University of Applied Sciences Esslingen
Department for Environmental Social Sciences and Geography, University of Freiburg
Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography (Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde, IfL)
University Library Freiburg

Project period

1 April 2014 – 31 March 2016