A Practical Method of Correcting Monthly Average Temperature Biases Resulting from Differing Times of Observation

Abstract

Biases in monthly average temperatures reported by cooperative weather observers arise from once-daily observations of maximum and minimum temperatures at times of day other than local midnight. A scheme for adjusting these reports to eliminate the biases and make them conform to the midnight-to-midnight reports of first-order weather stations is described. This scheme has been applied to climatological reports of the Washington, DC, cooperative network.