Digitization of Weather Records of Seungjeongwon Ilgi: A Historical Weather Dynamics Dataset of the Korean Peninsula in 1623-1910

TL;DR

This paper digitized 288 years of Korean historical weather records from the Seungjeongwon Ilgi, creating a machine-readable dataset that enables long-term climate variability studies, filling a crucial data gap for East Asia.

Contribution

The authors developed a method to extract, categorize, and convert traditional weather records into a digital, Gregorian calendar-based dataset, enhancing data accessibility for climate research.

Findings

The dataset covers 1623-1910 with detailed weather descriptions.

Conversion to Gregorian calendar improves dataset usability.

Publicly available dataset supports future climate variability studies.

Abstract

Historical weather records from Europe indicate that the Earth experienced substantial climate variability, which caused, for instance, the Little Ice Age and the global crisis in the period between the 14th and 19th centuries. However, it is still unclear how global this climate variability was because of the scarce meteorological data availability in other regions including East Asia, especially around the 17th century. In this context, Seungjeongwon Ilgi, a daily record of the Royal Secretariat of the Joseon Dynasty of Korea, is a precious source of historical meteorological records for the Korean Peninsula, as it covers 288 years of weather observations made during 1623-1910. We used the digital database of Seungjeongwon Ilgi to construct a machine-readable weather condition dataset. To this end, we extracted valid weather information from the original weather description text and compiled them into predefined weather categories. Additionally, we attempted to improve the usability of the dataset by converting the reported dates in the traditional calendar system to those in the Gregorian calendar. Finally, we outlined the promising implications of this dataset for meteorological and climatological studies, while describing the limitations of the dataset. Overall, future studies focusing on the climate and weather of the past could use this meteorological database for investigating long-term climate variability. Our datasets are publicly available at 10.5281/zenodo.8142701.