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.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aguilar, Enric et al. Guidelines on Climate Metadata and Homogenization. Edited by Paul Llansó. Geneva: World Meteorological Organization, 2003.
Auer, Ingeborg. “250 Jahre meteorologische Messungen in Kremsmünster und ihre Bedeutung für die Klimaforschung in Österreich.” ÖGM Bulletin 1 (2013): 13–19.
Auer, Ingeborg et al. “HISTALP—Historical Instrumental Climatological Surface Time Series of the Greater Alpine Region.” International Journal of Climatology 27 (2007): 17–46.
Böhm, Reinhard. “Urban Bias in Temperature Time Series—A Case Study for the City of Vienna, Austria.” Climatic Change 38 (1998): 113–28.
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.
Camuffo, Dario, and Phil Jones. “Improved Understanding of Past Climatic Variability from Early Daily European Instrumental Sources.” Climatic Change 53 (2002): 1–4.
Mestre, Olivier et al. “SPLIDHOM: A Method for Homogenization of Daily Temperature Observations.” Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 50 (2011): 2343–58.
Mestre, Olivier et al. “HOMER: A Homogenization Software—Methods and Applications.” IDŐJÁRÁS, Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service 117 (2013): 47–67.
Vincent, Lucie A. et al. “Homogenization of Daily Temperatures over Canada.” Journal of Climate 15 (2002): 1322–34.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Barbara Chimani for providing Fig. 9.2.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
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
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43020-5_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-43019-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-43020-5
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)