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Free Access A Harmonic Approach for Calculating Daily Temperature Normals Constrained by Homogenized Monthly Temperature Normals

Authors:
Anthony Arguez
x
and Scott Applequist
x
Affiliations
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National Climatic Data Center, Asheville, North Carolina
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-12-00195.1
Received: 24 August 2012
Final Form: 5 February 2013
Published Online: 23 July 2013
Abstract

NOAA released the new 1981–2010 climate normals in July 2011. These included monthly and daily normals of minimum and maximum temperature. Monthly normals were computed from monthly temperature values that were corrected for biases (i.e., homogenized) due to changes in observing practices over the course of the normals period (station moves, changes in observation time, and changes in instrumentation). Daily temperature observations, however, are not homogenized, which could lead to inconsistencies between the daily and monthly normals. This study offers a constrained harmonic technique that forces the daily temperature normals to be consistent with the monthly temperature normals. This approach replaces the cubic spline interpolation of monthly temperature normals that was used to compute earlier versions of NOAA's daily temperature normals. It effectively passes the homogenization applied at the monthly scale down to the daily scale, resulting in a smooth annual cycle devoid of day-to-day sampling variability and intermonth discontinuities.

Keywords: Climatology; Filtering techniques; Interpolation schemes; Optimization; Regression analysis; Statistical techniques
Corresponding author address: Anthony Arguez, NOAA/NCDC, Room 506, 151 Patton Avenue, Asheville, NC 28801. E-mail:
July 2013 Publication Cover

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