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Cited by 160Climate variability and modelsMeteorological Phenomena and SimulationsAtmospheric Ozone and Climate

Uncertainties in climate trends: Lessons from upper-air temperature records.

Thorne, Peter W., Parker, David E., Christy, John R., Mears, Carl A.·2005·Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
DOI 10.1175/bams-86-10-1437
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Abstract

Historically, meteorological observations have been made for operational forecasting rather than long-term monitoring purposes, so that there have been numerous changes in instrumentation and procedures. Hence to create climate quality datasets requires the identification, estimation, and removal of many nonclimatic biases from the historical data. Construction of a number of new tropospheric temperature climate datasets has highlighted previously unrecognized uncertainty in multidecadal temperature trends aloft. The choice of dataset can even change the sign of upper-air trends relative to those reported at the surface. So structural uncertainty introduced unintentionally through dataset construction choices is important and needs to be understood and mitigated. A number of ways that this could be addressed for historical records are discussed, as is the question of How it needs to be reduced through future coordinated observing systems with long-term monitoring as a driver, enabling explicit calculation, and removal of nonclimatic biases. Although upper-air temperature records are used to illustrate the arguments, it is strongly believed that the findings are applicable to all long-term climate datasets and variables. A full characterization of observational uncertainty is as vitally important as recent intensive efforts to understand climate model uncertainties if the goal to rigorously reduce the uncertainty regarding both past and future climate changes is to be achieved.

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Crossref · 10.1175/bams-86-10-1437

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  • Artifacts in the climate record confound attempts to quantify climate variability and change.

    “Such artifacts in the climate record ultimately confound attempts to quantify climate variability and change (Thorne et al. 2005).”

    From Homogenization of Temperature Series via Pairwise Comparisons (2009) · cites this paper as Thorne et al. 2005

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Authors
Thorne, P. W., Parker, D. E., Christy, J. R., & Mears, C. A.
ORCID
Venue
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Publisher
American Meteorological Society
Published
2005-10
Volume
86
Issue
10
Pages
1437-1442
ISSN
  • 0003-0007 (ISSN-L)
  • 1520-0477
DOI
10.1175/bams-86-10-1437
OpenAlex
W2168407872
Cited by
160
References
16
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 11
FWCI
10.78
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (publishedVersion)
  • Maynooth University ePrints and eTheses Archive (Maynooth University) (acceptedVersion)
Funders
Met Office
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
  • Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations
  • Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Atmospheric Ozone and Climate
Keywords
tropospheric temperature trends, observational uncertainty, climate data quality, structural uncertainty, long-term climate monitoring, historical meteorological observations

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