Old explorer weathers well

The Captain Cook statue on Kaiti Hill, Gisborne. Photo / Richard Robinson

Records from Captain Cook's voyages around New Zealand are being used to predict the effects of climate change.

Researchers are studying logbooks from about 300 vessels used by 18th and 19th century sailors, including Cook's HMS Resolution.

They are cross-referencing the data with historical records of crop failures, droughts and storms and comparing their findings with modern records to predict similar events.

The project involves researchers from Sunderland University, near Cook's British birthplace, the British Atmospheric Data Centre and the UK's Met Office. Research team leader Dr Dennis Wheeler said the records were "astonishingly good, often better than modern logbooks".

Most of the information was taken from the ship's barometer and thermometer, extremely expensive instruments usually kept in the captain's cabin.

The logbooks from Cook's voyages contain detailed weather records, which he and his senior officers updated daily or even hourly. Cook expert Professor Dame Anne Salmond described them as an untapped resource: "The data's fantastic."

Salmond, who teaches at Auckland University and wrote The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas, said accurate weather records could be the difference between life and death for Cook and his crews.

"Even when they were at anchor they had to be very rigorous, because once their boat was wrecked there were no planes or anything to pick them up - that was it."

Cook mapped the New Zealand coastline, with only minor errors, during his first great voyage, on HMS Endeavour, from 1768 to 1771. He returned while captaining Resolution on his two other epic journeys.

Cook's attention to detail is clear from his note as Endeavour sailed off North Cape on January 1, 1770.

He wrote: "It will hardly be credited that in the midst of summer and in the latitude of 35 degrees such a gale of wind as we have had could have happened, which for its strength and continuance was such as I hardly was ever in before - fortunately at this time we were a good distance from land, otherwise it could have proved fatal to us and the ship."

The research is due to end in December, but it could take at least another year to analyse the information.

Logbooks kept by Charles Darwin while travelling on HMS Beagle, and Captain Bligh's journal from HMS Bounty, are also being studied.