The Russian geomagnetic observatory network established by Adolf Kupffer (1799-1865) in the 1830s was a great success and of scientific benefit to the geomagnetic community of the 19th century. The Russian network of magnetic observations with a large longitudinal extent of about 200 degrees and a latitudinal range of about 20 degrees provided an important contribution of magnetic data acquisition for the scientific community. In addition to magnetic observations a great number of meteorological observations (e.g., atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, cloudiness and precipitation) were made continuously during day and night.
All magnetic and meteorological observations have been published since 1837 by Kupffer and his successors first in the series of Annuaire magnétique et météorologique du corps des ingénieurs des mines de Russie (1837-1846) and later in Annales de l'observatoire physique central de Russie (1847-1899). The earliest volumes were published separately in Russian for domestic use and in French (later in German) for the international scientific community. Each yearbook volume comprises several hundreds of printed pages with tables of magnetic and meteorological observations and their explanations. Original Russian yearbooks have been preserved, in more or less complete collections, and they are available in libraries of several countries that were in co-operation in magnetism and meteorology with Russia in the 19th century.
In recent years much effort has been done for rescuing historical magnetic data according to the resolutions of the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy (IAGA). The yearbooks (1837-1913) of the Russian meteorological and magnetic data with background meta-data information, have been converted into pdf pictures by the Library of NOAA (http://library.noaa.gov/Collections/Digital-Docs/Foreign-Climate-Data/Russia-Climate-Data#o11571010). We have utilized Russian magnetic observatory data in their original printed yearbooks available in Finnish scientific libraries, that is, for the years 1850-1910. We have photographed the tables containing magnetic observations by using a normal digital camera. Special pattern recognition software was designed for digitizing the photographed pages into machine-readable form for further data analysis.
Our study comprises an analysis of the magnetic results of four Russian observatories for 13 years 1850-1862. During that time interval the recordings were continuing on hourly bases (spot readings at every full hour) at four observatories without any lengthy gaps. Before 1850 there were longer gaps in the observations and many nightly hours were skipped. After 1862 there were no magnetic recordings for about eight years. The period 1850-1862 is thus the most suitable for geomagnetic analysis of the whole Russian observatory activities since 1837.
Results of our scientific analysis of the old Russian magnetic data are published in Annales Geophysicae:
Nevanlinna, H. and Häkkinen, L.: Results of Russian geomagnetic observatories in the 19th century: magnetic activity, 1841-1862. Ann. Geophys., vol. 28, 917-926, 2010.
(http://www.ann-geophys.net/28/917/2010/)
These web pages provide additional information about data analysis and links to download the magnetic data used in the study.
Heikki Nevanlinna
Finnish Meteorological Institute
P.O.Box 503, FIN-00101 Helsinki
FINLAND
heikki.nevanlinna@gmail.com
Lasse Häkkinen
Finnish Meteorological Institute
P.O.Box 503, FIN-00101 Helsinki
FINLAND
lasse.hakkinen@fmi.fi
