From Archives to Insights: Extreme Weather Events and Socio‐Economic Impacts in Madagascar From Newly Digitised Historical Climate Records (1949–1966)

ABSTRACT Billions of historical weather observations dating back centuries remain in the original paper form, vulnerable to permanent loss due to deterioration and unusable by modern science. Africa, in particular, faces significant challenges in climate impact research due to the scarcity of consistent, high‐quality historical observational data. The Climate Data Rescue‐Africa (CliDaR‐Africa) project engages second‐year undergraduates at Maynooth University, Ireland, in participatory, classroom‐based digitization of unique African meteorological records. This paper presents detailed outcomes from the CliDaR‐Africa projects during 2023 and 2024 which successfully digitised over 300,000 unique sub‐daily and daily meteorological observations from stations in Madagascar and the Central African Republic spanning 1949 to 1966. Initial analysis of the rescued Madagascar records reveals several notable extreme weather events, underscoring the country's high vulnerability to hazards such as hot spells, droughts, heavy rainfall, and particularly tropical cyclones. Among these is a sequence of tropical cyclones which received limited international coverage either at the time or in the intervening years. By bringing these overlooked extremes to light, the data potentially alters our understanding of extremes and their unusualness in the modern era. Complementary documentary evidence corroborates the meteorological findings and provides rare, detailed insights into the socio‐economic consequences, illustrating how these extremes impacted on the communities and economies of Madagascar at the time.