Researchers at Maynooth University’s climate research centre, ICARUS, have launched a new citizen science project to recover historical African weather data that is vital for climate research.

The project, Weather Archive Africa, is calling on volunteers to sift through around four million images from 43 African countries.

The images, originally collected by the African Centre of Meteorological Application for Development, the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium and the World Meteorological Organization, were digitised in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Their quality and completeness, however, vary, and the location and date of many observations remain unclear.

“Before we can transcribe the data, we need to separate readable images from unreadable ones,” said ICARUS researcher Kevin Healion. Volunteers will help identify which images are usable and ensure that station names, months and years are recorded.

The project is hosted on Zooniverse, a global platform connecting researchers with volunteers. Prof Peter Thorne, director of ICARUS, said rescuing African weather data is critical to understanding climate change in this vulnerable region.

Carlo Buontempo of the Copernicus Climate Change Service said the project will enrich climate observation databases and shed new light on the continent’s climate history.

Volunteers can take part online via Zooniverse.