For Reuters, Feilding Cage describes a weather time device project by NOAA that utilizes old shipping logs to construct climate models for the 19 th century:

In the 19 th and early 20 th centuries, millions of weather observations were thoroughly made in the logbooks of ships sailing through mainly uncharted waters. This “weather condition time maker,” as NOAA puts it, can estimate what the weather condition was for every day back to 1836, improving our understanding of extreme weather events and the impacts of climate modification.

Consider my mind blown.

I wonder what scientists will draw out from our present data streams a century from now.

Nevermind. I don’t would like to know.