1. A NASA GISTEMPv4 Observational Uncertainty Ensemble.
- Author
-
Lenssen, Nathan, Schmidt, Gavin A., Hendrickson, Michael, Jacobs, Peter, Menne, Matthew J., and Ruedy, Reto
- Subjects
LAND surface temperature ,OCEAN temperature ,SURFACE temperature ,APPLIED sciences ,CLIMATOLOGY - Abstract
The historical global temperature record is an essential data product for quantifying the variability and change of the Earth system. In recent years, better characterization of observational uncertainty in global and hemispheric trends has become available, but the methodologies are not necessarily applicable to analyses at smaller regional areas, or monthly or seasonal means, where station sparsity and other systematic issues contribute to greater uncertainty. This study presents a gridded uncertainty ensemble of historical surface temperature anomalies from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Surface Temperature (GISTEMP) product. This ensemble characterizes the complex spatial and temporal correlation structure of uncertainty, enabling better uncertainty propagation for climate and applied science in applications of historical temperature products at spatial scales from global to regional and temporal scales from centennial to monthly. This work details the methodology for generating the uncertainty ensemble, presents key statistics of the uncertainty evolution over space and time, and provides best practices for using the uncertainty ensemble in future studies. Summary statistics from the uncertainty ensemble agree well with the previous GISTEMP global uncertainty assessment, providing confidence in both. Plain Language Summary: NASA's historical surface temperature product, GISTEMP, combines measurements of sea surface temperature and land surface air temperature to estimate how temperature has changed on Earth since 1880. In this study, we combine all known sources of uncertainty in these measurements to determine the best estimate as well as the likely interval for surface temperature in the global average as well as on a latitude‐longitude grid. Results agree with previous uncertainty assessments of GISTEMP as well as uncertainty assessments of other major global temperature products. The uncertainty is quantified through an uncertainty ensemble, or 200 equally likely reconstructions of monthly mean surface temperature. This uncertainty ensemble makes it easy to incorporate the uncertainty in surface temperature in subsequent studies. Key Points: A 200‐member ensemble has been created to quantify uncertainty in the GISTEMP history of surface temperature anomaliesThis ensemble enables more accurate statistical analyses of key global change metricsThe median ensemble estimate agrees well with the operational GISTEMP analysis and other global products [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF