Progress towards a holistic land and marine surface meteorological database and a call for additional contributions

Noone, Simon; Atkinson, C. P.; Berry, David I.; Dunn, Robert; Freeman, Eric; González, Irene Pérez; Kennedy, John J.; Kent, Elizabeth C.; Kettle, Anthony J.; McNeill, Shelley; Menne, Matthew J.; Stephens, Ag; Thorne, Peter; Tucker, William David; Voces, Corinne; Willett, Kate M.

doi:10.1002/gdj3.109

Cited by 21 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…A detailed understanding of past weather and climate, including variability and trends, is essential to better understand and predict ongoing changes in climate and weather statistics. Historical observational datasets intended to accomplish this are spatially and temporally incomplete, and often have inhomogeneity issues (Brönnimann et al 2013;Cram et al 2015;Jones et al 1999;Parker et al 1997;Rennie et al 2014;Thorne et al 2017;Noone et al 2021). Reanalyses can provide complete and consistent atmospheric fields by objectively combining historical observations with modern numerical weather prediction model forecasts, while accounting for estimated errors in both (Kalnay et al 1996).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Evaluation of the Performance of the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Version 3

et al. 2021

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The performance of a new historical reanalysis, the NOAA-CIRES-DOE 20th Century Reanalysis Version 3 (20CRv3), is evaluated via comparisons with other reanalyses and independent observations. This dataset provides global, 3-hourly estimates of the atmosphere from 1806 to 2015 by assimilating only surface pressure observations and prescribing sea surface temperature, sea ice concentration, and radiative forcings. Comparisons with independent observations, other reanalyses, and satellite products suggest that 20CRv3 can reliably produce atmospheric estimates on scales ranging from weather events to long-term climatic trends. Not only does 20CRv3 recreate a “best estimate” of the weather, including extreme events, it also provides an estimate of its confidence through the use of an ensemble. Surface pressure statistics suggest that these confidence estimates are reliable. Comparisons with independent upper-air observations in the Northern Hemisphere demonstrate that 20CRv3 has skill throughout the 20th century. Upper-air fields from 20CRv3 in the late 20th century and early 21st century correlate well with full-input reanalyses, and the correlation is predicted by the confidence fields from 20CRv3. The skill of analyzed 500hPa geopotential heights from 20CRv3 for 1979-2015 is comparable to that of modern operational 3- to 4-day forecasts. Finally, 20CRv3 performs well on climate timescales. Long time series and multidecadal averages of mass, circulation, and precipitation fields agree well with modern reanalyses and station- and satellite-based products. 20CRv3 is also able to capture trends in tropospheric layer temperatures that correlate well with independent products in the 20th century, placing recent trends in a longer historical context.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Evaluation of the Performance of the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Version 3

et al. 2021

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“…As noted in Menne et al (in prep) , the ISD is being replaced during late 2022, with a new Global Historical Climate Network Hourly (GHCNH) dataset taking its place in the NOAA/NCEI dataset offerings. GHCNH has been co-developed with a Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) providing access to in situ observations (Thorne et al 2017, Noone et al 2021. These efforts are also including the parent datasets of the ISD, and this issue is present in these products too, until such time as the USAF has corrected the decoding of past messages.…”

Section: Correction and Impactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reduction in reversal of global stilling arising from correction to encoding of calm periods^*

Dunn¹,

Azorín-Molina²,

Menne³

et al. 2022

Environ. Res. Commun.

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We describe an undocumented change in how calm periods in near-surface wind speed (and direction) observations have been encoded in a subset of global datasets of sub-daily data after 2013. This has resulted in the under-estimation of the number of calm periods for meteorological stations across much of Asia and Europe. Hence average wind speeds after 2013 have been over-estimated, affecting the assessment of changes in global stilling and reversal phenomena after this date. By addressing this encoding change we show that globally, since 2010, wind speeds have recovered by around 30% less than previously thought.

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“…Available observations to inform the estimation of global surface temperature changes are sparse and oftentimes discontinuous, with some regions consistently under‐sampled or, worse still, completely unsampled (Freeman et al, 2017; Rennie et al, 2014). Coverage of available observations has varied considerably over time with early records being much more sparse (Noone et al, 2021). They also suffer from time‐varying biases arising from changes in instrumentation, siting and observational practices which must be adjusted for prior to use in long‐term climate applications (Aguilar et al, 2003; Conrad & Pollak, 1950; Kennedy, 2014; Menne & Williams, 2009; Trewin, 2010; Venema et al, 2020).…”

Section: Datasets Of Global Surface Temperature Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Discussion on “A combined estimate of global temperature”

Thorne

2022

Environmetrics

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While the real-world has warmed in one unique way, the available data, which is spatio-temporally incomplete and contains biases of unknown nature and timing, means this quantity can only ever be estimated. Craigmile and Guttorp (2022) propose an approach that optimally combines the range of existing products to gain a refined estimate. Implicit in this or, indeed, any similar approach, are assumptions about the available estimates representing both an unbiased and representative draw from the population of potential plausible estimates that could have been created. There are well-founded reasons to doubt that this is the case. An alternative approach, used in the IPCC report, is to employ much simpler approaches which, in particular, hedge against underestimation of the true uncertainty in the evolution of global surface temperatures, and thus serve to future-proof current estimates against subsequent dataset innovations arising from future improvements in our understanding.

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Progress towards a holistic land and marine surface meteorological database and a call for additional contributions

Abstract: Historical observational climate records are crucial in understanding climatic variability, extreme past weather and climate events and allowing us to make informed decisions for better societal adaptation to climate change (e.g., Kennedy

Cited by 21 publications

References 38 publications

An Evaluation of the Performance of the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Version 3

An Evaluation of the Performance of the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Version 3

Reduction in reversal of global stilling arising from correction to encoding of calm periods^*

Discussion on “A combined estimate of global temperature”

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Progress towards a holistic land and marine surface meteorological database and a call for additional contributions

Abstract: Historical observational climate records are crucial in understanding climatic variability, extreme past weather and climate events and allowing us to make informed decisions for better societal adaptation to climate change (e.g., Kennedy

Cited by 21 publications

References 38 publications

An Evaluation of the Performance of the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Version 3

An Evaluation of the Performance of the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Version 3

Reduction in reversal of global stilling arising from correction to encoding of calm periods *

Discussion on “A combined estimate of global temperature”

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Product

Resources

About

Reduction in reversal of global stilling arising from correction to encoding of calm periods^*