A missionary's diary became weather dataSourced
He logged weather twice a day.
The notes became climate evidence.
Richard Davis recorded temperature and pressure in northern New Zealand from 1839 onward, with a gap during mission work. His diaries are among the country's oldest continuous land-based weather records and have helped later climate research; one entry even noted rare snow.
Daily notes
can outlast their author.
Summary / translation: Unbubly · CC BY-SA 4.0
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Richard Davis (missionary) · Wikimedia contributors
Adapted, summarized and translated from the source. Adapted text is also available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Reviewed: 2026-10-01