Creating Climate Reference Datasets: CARDS Workshop on Adjusting Radiosonde Temperature Data for Climate Monitoring

Abstract

Homogeneous upper-air temperature time series are necessary for climate change detection and attribution.About 20 participants met at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina on 11-12 October 2000 to discuss methods of adjusting radiosonde data for inhomogeneities arising from instrument and other changes. Representatives of several research groups described their methods for identifying change points and adjusting temperature time series and compared the results of applying these methods to data from 12 radiosonde stations.The limited agreement among these results and the potential impact of these adjustments on upperair trends estimates indicate a need for further work in this area and for greater attention to homogeneity issues in planning future changes in radiosonde observations.