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Analysis and Interpretation: Homogenization of Instrumental Data

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The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History

Abstract

To explore past climates and to analyze variability and change, historical climatologists make use of instrumental measurements that pre-date our modern, standardized equipment and measurement practices. But are long-term instrumental series always reliable? And when can we trust the displayed trends? This chapter introduces methods for the homogenization of early instrumental data, an essential procedure to detect non-climatological breaks or trends in a series and remove them as best as possible.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Auer, 2013.

  2. 2.

    Camuffo and Jones, 2002.

  3. 3.

    Aguilar et al., 2003.

  4. 4.

    Mestre et al., 2013.

  5. 5.

    For example, see Vincent et al. (2002) for simpler methods and Mestre et al. (2011) for more complex methods.

  6. 6.

    Auer et al., 2007.

  7. 7.

    Böhm et al., 2010.

  8. 8.

    Böhm, 1998.

References

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  • Auer, Ingeborg et al. “HISTALP—Historical Instrumental Climatological Surface Time Series of the Greater Alpine Region.” International Journal of Climatology 27 (2007): 17–46.

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  • Böhm, Reinhard. “Urban Bias in Temperature Time Series—A Case Study for the City of Vienna, Austria.” Climatic Change 38 (1998): 113–28.

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  • Böhm, Reinhard et al. “The Early Instrumental Warm-Bias: A Solution for Long Central European Temperature Series, 1760–2007.” Climatic Change 101 (2010): 41–67.

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  • Camuffo, Dario, and Phil Jones. “Improved Understanding of Past Climatic Variability from Early Daily European Instrumental Sources.” Climatic Change 53 (2002): 1–4.

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  • Mestre, Olivier et al. “SPLIDHOM: A Method for Homogenization of Daily Temperature Observations.” Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 50 (2011): 2343–58.

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  • Mestre, Olivier et al. “HOMER: A Homogenization Software—Methods and Applications.” IDŐJÁRÁS, Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service 117 (2013): 47–67.

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  • Vincent, Lucie A. et al. “Homogenization of Daily Temperatures over Canada.” Journal of Climate 15 (2002): 1322–34.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Barbara Chimani for providing Fig. 9.2.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik, Vienna, Austria

    Ingeborg Auer

Authors
  1. Ingeborg Auer
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Sam White

  2. Institute of History, Oeschger Centre for Climate Change, Bern, Switzerland

    Christian Pfister

  3. Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Franz Mauelshagen

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© 2018 The Author(s)

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Auer, I. (2018). Analysis and Interpretation: Homogenization of Instrumental Data. In: White, S., Pfister, C., Mauelshagen, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_9

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-43019-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-43020-5

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

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