Publication:
Quality control and homogeneity of precipitation data in the southwest of Europe

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Full text at PDC
Publication Date
2001
Advisors (or tutors)
Editors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
American Meteorological Society
Citations
Google Scholar
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Abstract
A quality control process involving outliers processing, homogenization, and interpolation has been applied to 95 monthly precipitation series in the Iberian Peninsula, southern France, and northern Africa during the period 1899- 1989. A detailed description of the procedure results is provided and the impact of adjustments on trend estimation is discussed. Outliers have been censored by trimming extreme values. Homogeneity adjustments have been developed by applying the Standard Normal Homogeneity Test in combination with an objective methodology to select reference series. The spatial distribution of outliers indicates that they are due to climate variability rather than measurement errors. After carrying out the homogeneity procedure, 40% of the series were found to be homogeneous, 49.5% became homogeneous after one adjustment, and 9.5% after two adjustments. About 30% of the inhomogeneities could be traced to information in the scarce history files. It is shown that these data present severe homogeneity problems and that applying outliers and homogeneity adjustments greatly changes the patterns of trends for this area.
Description
© 2001 American Meteorological Society. This work was supported by Project Number CLI97-0558, Comunidad de Madrid, and Fundación Ramón Areces. The authors also thank P. Brandt, P. Cuesta, M. Widmann, and E. Zorita for their comments on the original version of the manuscript. We thank also F. Zwiers and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.
Unesco subjects
Keywords
Citation
Alexanderson, H. A., 1986: A homogeneity test applied to precipitation data. J. Climatol., 6, 661–675. Almarza, C., J. A. López, and C. Flores, 1996: Homogeneidad y variabilidad de los registros históricos de precipitación de España. Tech. Rep. A-143, Instituto Nacional de Meteorología, Madrid, Spain, 318 pp. [Available from Instituto Nacional de Meteorología, Madrid, Spain.] Barnett, V., and T. Lewis, 1994: Outliers in Statistical Data. 3d ed. J. Wiley and Sons, 604 pp. Buishand, T. A., 1982: Some methods for testing the homogeneity of rainfall records. J. Hydrol., 58, 11–27. Conrad, V., and C. Pollak, 1950: Methods in Climatology. 2d ed. Harvard University Press, 459 pp. Durbin, J., and G. S. Watson, 1971: Testing for serial correlation in least squares regression, III. Biometrika, 37, 1–19. Eischeid, J., C. B. Baker, T. Karl, and H. F. Díaz, 1995: The quality control of long-term climatological data using objective data analysis. J. Appl. Meteor., 34, 2787–2795. Esteban Parra, M. J., F. S. Rodrigo, and J. Castro Díez, 1998: Spatial and temporal patterns of precipitation in Spain for the period 1880–1992. Int. J. Climatol., 18, 1557–1574. Fernández Mills, G., 1995: Principal component analysis of precipitation and rainfall regionalization in Spain. Theor. Appl. Climatol., 50, 117–131. Filippov, V. V., 1968: Quality control procedures for meteorological data. Tech. Rep. 26, WMO, Geneva, Switzerland, 38 pp. Garrido, J., J. A. García, and V. L. Mateos, 1996: Homogeneidad y variabilidad natural de series largas de precipitación. An. Fís. 92, 19–31. González Rouco, J. F., H. Heyen, E. Zorita, and F. Valero, 2000: Agreement between observed rainfall trends and climate change simulations in the southwest of Europe. J. Climate, 13, 3057–3065. Grant, E. L., and R. S. Leavenworth, 1972: Statistical Quality Control. McGraw-Hill, 764 pp. Hanssen-Bauer, I., and J. Førland, 1994: Homogenizing long Norwegian precipitation series. J. Climate, 7, 1001–1013. Hawkins, P. M., 1977: Testing a sequence of observations for a shift in location. J. Amer. Stat. Assoc., 72, 180–186. Hegerl, G. C., H. von Storch, K. Hasselmann, B. D. Santer, U. Cubasch, and P. D. Jones, 1996: Detecting anthropogenic climate change with an optimal fingerprint method. J. Climate, 9, 2281–2306. Houghton, J., B. A. Callendar, and S. K. Varney, Eds., 1992: Climate Change: The Supplemntary Report to the IPCC Scientific Assesment. Cambridge University Press, 205 pp. ---, L. G. Meira Filho, B. A. Callander, N. Harris, A. Kattenberg, and K. Maskell, Eds., 1995: Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, 572 pp. Hurrell, J. W., 1995: Decadal trends in the North Atlantic Oscillation: Regional temperatures and precipitation. Science, 269, 676–679. Jones, P., and Coauthors, 1985: A grid point surface air temperature data set for the northern hemisphere. Tech. Rep. TRO22, U.S. Department of Energy, Carbon Dioxide Research Division, Washington, DC, 251 pp. Karl, T. R., and C. N. Williams, 1987: An approach to adjusting climatological time series for discontinuous inhomogeneities. J. Climate Appl. Meteor., 26, 1744–1763. Lamb, P. J., and R. Peppler, 1987: North Atlantic Oscillation: Concept and application. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 68, 1218–1225. Lanzante, J. R., 1996: Resistant, robust and non-parametric techniques for the analysis of climate data: Theory and examples, including applications to historical radiosonde station data. Int. J. Climatol., 16, 1197–1226. Linés, A., 1970: The Climate of the Iberian Peninsula. Climates of Northern and Western Europe, C. Wallen, Ed., World Survey of Climatology, Vol. 5, Elsevier, 195–239. Maheras, P., 1988: Changes in precipitation conditions in the western Mediterranean over the last century. J. Climatol., 8, 179–189. Makrogiannis, T. J., H. S. Sahsamanoglou, A. A. Flocas, and A. Bloutsos, 1991: Analysis of the monthly zonal index values and longterm changes in the North Atlantic and Europe. Int. J. Climatol., 11, 493–503. Mitchell, J. M., B. Dzerdzeevski, H. Flohn, W. L. Hofmeyr, H. H. Lamb, K. N. Rao, and C. C. Wallen, 1966: Climate change. Tech. Rep. 79, WMO, Geneva, Switzerland, 79 pp. Peterson, T. C., R. Vose, R. Schmoyer, and V. Razuvaev, 1998a: Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) quality control of monthly temperature data. Int. J. Climatol, 18, 1169–1179. ---, and Coauthors, 1998b: Homogeneity adjustments of in situ atmospheric climate data: A review. Int. J. Climatol., 18, 1493–1517. Rhoades, D. A., and M. J. Salinger, 1993: Adjustment of temperature and rainfall records for site changes. Int. J. Climatol., 13, 899–913. Rodríguez Puebla, C., A. H. Encinas, S. Nieto, and J. Garmendia, 1998: Spatial and temporal patterns of annual precipitation varibility over the Iberian Peninsula. Int. J. Climatol., 18, 299–316. Santer, B. D., K. E. Taylor, T. M. Wigley, J. E. Penner, P. D. Jones, and U. Cubash, 1995: Towards the detection and attribution of an anthropogenic effect on climate. Climate Dyn., 12, 77–100. Serrano, A., J. A. García, V. L. Mateos, M. L. Cancillo, and J. Garrido, 1999: Monthly modes of variation of precipitation over the Iberian peninsula. J. Climate, 12, 2894–2919. Snedecor, G. W., and W. G. Cochran, 1972: Statistical Methods. 6th ed. Iowa University Press, 593 pp. Trenberth, K. E., 1984: Some effects of finite sample size and persistence on meteorological statistics. Part I: Autocorrelations. Mon. Wea. Rev., 112, 2359–2368. ---, and D. A. Paolino, 1980: The Northern Hemisphere sea-level pressure data set: Trends, errors and discontinuities. Mon. Wea. Rev., 108, 856–872. Valero, F., J. A. García Miguel, M. L. Martín, and Y. Luna, 1993: Detecting long-term variations in precipitation in the souteastern Iberian Peninsula. Ann. Geophys., 11, 837–845. ---, J. F. González, F. J. Doblas, and J. A. García Miguel, 1996a: A method for the reconstruction and temporal extension of climatological time series. Int. J. Climatol., 16, 213–227. ---, F. J. Doblas, J. F. González, and J. A. García Miguel, 1996b: On long-term evolution of seasonal precipitation in southwestern Europe. Ann. Geophys., 14, 976–985. ---, R. M. Rodríguez, and J. A. García Miguel, 1997a: Filling data algorithms in urban air pollution monitoring networks. J. Environ. Eng. Div. ASCE, 103, 395–403. ---, M. Y. Luna, and M. Martín, 1997b: An overwiew of a heavy rain event in Southeastern Iberia: The role of large-scale meteorological conditions. Ann. Geophys., 15, 494–502. Zorita, E., V. Kharin, and H. von Storch, 1992: The atmospheric circulation and sea surface temperature in the North Atlantic area in winter: Their interaction and relevance for Iberian precipitation. J. Climate, 5, 1097–1108. Zwiers, F. W., and H. von Storch, 1995: Taking serieal correlations into account in tests of the mean. J. Climate, 8, 336–351.
Collections