The International Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) Initiative 

Rob Allan, International ACRE Program Manager, Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, Devon, United Kingdom

The International ACRE Initiative both undertakes and facilitates the recovery of historical instrumental surface terrestrial and marine global weather observations to underpin three dimensional global historical reanalyses spanning the last 200-250 years, with downscaling by the PRECIS (Providing REgional Climates for Impacts Studies) model taking the reanalyses output down to finer resolution, for the needs of climate science and climate applications, educators and students, and users worldwide.  It will allow policy makers to address climate variability and change issues in ways and over time spans not previously possible

Under its international umbrella, that links more than 35 projects, institutions, and organisations around the globe, ACRE has both developed, and is looking to develop, regional foci which will hone its efforts to recover, image, digitise and archive historical instrumental surface terrestrial and marine weather observations in regions with untapped or under-represented data potential. These foci are currently: ACRE Chile, ACRE Canada, ACRE Pacific,
ACRE India, ACRE Arctic, ACRE Africa, ACRE China and ACRE Southern Ocean.

ACRE data activities continue to enhance the holdings in both the International Surface Pressure Databank (ISPD) and the International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) providing the observations which allow its US partners with the 20th Century Reanalysis Project (20CR) to create a global historical reanalysis spanning the period 1871 to 2008.  Additional reanalyses are also envisioned covering even longer periods, with a Sparse Input Reanalysis for Climate Applications (SIRCA) planned to cover 1850-2014 and, together with the Ocean Atmosphere Reanalysis for Climate
Applications (OARCA), eventually extending such reanalyses back to 1800.  In fact, ACRE is now recognized as being an important data coordinator and provider of surface data for all current and future reanalyses.

Through its core linkages between observations, reanalyses and the tailoring, shaping, and downscaling of that material in alignment with user requirements, the Initiative is filling a vital role in making climate science products freely available and their generation transparent to all users.  With its efforts to develop state-of-the-art mass data handling, access and visualization technology, plus citizen science engagements, the Initiative is building the infrastructure to deliver its output and outreach globally. 

In support of its global historical terrestrial and marine data element, ACRE is also working with the international citizen science/crowd sourcing community in a project called OldWeather, which is focusing on public mass digitisation of material in some 7,000 extended-WW1 period (1914-1923) ship log books from the National Archives in the UK.  The aim is to expand such citizen science activities in order to engage the general public in global science activities and gain their support for, and involvement in, massive scale data recovery and digitisation.  To aid all of this work, ACRE has established real inter/cross-disciplinary engagements between climate, social, economic, environmental and political sciences and the humanities worldwide - ie. Historic Weather  and SAILS.

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