Evaluating the impact of U.S. Historical Climatology Network homogenization using the U.S. Climate Reference Network
Open accessAbstract
Numerous inhomogeneities including station moves, instrument changes, and time of observation changes in the U.S. Historical Climatological Network (USHCN) complicate the assessment of long‐term temperature trends. Detection and correction of inhomogeneities in raw temperature records have been undertaken by NOAA and other groups using automated pairwise neighbor comparison approaches, but these have proven controversial due to the large trend impact of homogenization in the United States. The new U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) provides a homogenous set of surface temperature observations that can serve as an effective empirical test of adjustments to raw USHCN stations. By comparing nearby pairs of USHCN and USCRN stations, we find that adjustments make both trends and monthly anomalies from USHCN stations much more similar to those of neighboring USCRN stations for the period from 2004 to 2015 when the networks overlap. These results improve our confidence in the reliability of homogenized surface temperature records.
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The PHA has been shown to improve the accuracy of anomalies and trends in real data when compared to observations from the U.S. Climate Reference Network.
“The algorithm has also been shown to improve the accuracy of anomalies and trends in real data when compared to observations from the U.S. Climate Reference Network (Hausfather et al. 2016), whose stations meet the highest station siting standards and are managed to prevent changes that cause shifts in the data (Diamond et al. 2013).”
From The Global Historical Climatology Network Monthly Temperature Dataset, Version 4 (2018) · cites this paper as Hausfather et al. 2016
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References 26 · Cited by 32
- Authors
- Hausfather, Z., Cowtan, K., Menne, M. J., & Williams, C. N.
- Affiliations
- Berkeley Earth (US)
- University of York (GB)
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (US)
- Corresponding author
- Hausfather, Zeke
- Venue
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Publisher
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- Published
- 2016-02-25
- Volume
- 43
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1695-1701
- ISSN
- 0094-8276 (ISSN-L)
- 1944-8007
- OpenAlex
- W2255117943
- Semantic Scholar
- 482df220c30100f9013f1e870ffe6149a16da0e6
- Cited by
- 32
- References
- 26
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 3.70
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Geophysical Research Letters (publishedVersion)
- White Rose Research Online (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield, University of York) (submittedVersion)
- NOAA Institutional Repository (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Berkeley Earth
- NOAA
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Engineering › Urban Heat Island Mitigation
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Aerospace Engineering › Calibration and Measurement Techniques
- Keywords
- climate data homogenization, U.S. Climate Reference Network, inhomogeneity detection, instrument change, temperature trends, monthly temperature anomalies, long-term temperature trends
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