An improved ensemble of land surface air temperatures since 1880 using revised pair-wise homogenization algorithms accounting for autocorrelation

Abstract

Land surface air temperatures (LSAT) inferred from weather station data differ among major research groups. The estimate by NOAA's monthly Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCNm) averages 0.028C cooler between 1880 and 1940 than Berkeley Earth's and 0.148C cooler than the Climate Research Unit estimates. Such systematic offsets can arise from differences in how poorly documented changes in measurement characteristics are detected and adjusted. Building upon an existing pairwise homogenization algorithm used in generating the fourth version of NOAA's GHCNm(V4), PHA0, we propose two revisions to account for autocorrelation in climate variables. One version, PHA1, makes minimal modification to PHA0 by extending the threshold used in breakpoint detection to be a function of LSAT autocorrelation. The other version, PHA2, uses penalized likelihood to detect breakpoints through optimizing a modelselection problem globally. To facilitate efficient optimization for series with more than 1000 time steps, a multiparent genetic algorithm is proposed for PHA2. Tests on synthetic data generated by adding breakpoints to CMIP6 simulations and realizations from a Gaussian process indicate that PHA1 and PHA2 both similarly outperform PHA0 in recovering accurate climatic trends. Applied to unhomogenized GHCNmV4, both revised algorithms detect breakpoints that correspond with available station metadata. Uncertainties are estimated by perturbing algorithmic parameters, and an ensemble is constructed by pooling 50 PHA1- and 50 PHA2-based members. The continental-mean warming in this new ensemble is consistent with that of Berkeley Earth, despite using different homogenization approaches. Relative to unhomogenized data, our homogenization increases the 1880-2022 trend by 0.16 [0.12, 0.19]8C century21 (95% confidence interval), leading to continental-mean warming of 1.65 [1.62, 1.69]8C over 2010-22 relative to 1880-1900.

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