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Are there spurious temperature trends in the United States Climate Division database?
Author(s) -
Keim Barry D.,
Wilson Adam M.,
Wake Cameron P.,
Huntington Thomas G.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2002gl016295
Subject(s) - spurious relationship , longitude , latitude , elevation (ballistics) , climate change , environmental science , climatology , scale (ratio) , data set , geographic coordinate system , division (mathematics) , meteorology , geography , physical geography , geology , statistics , cartography , geodesy , mathematics , oceanography , geometry , arithmetic
The United States (U.S.) Climate Division data set is commonly used in applied climatic studies in the United States. The divisional averages are calculated by including all available stations within a division at any given time. The averages are therefore vulnerable to shifts in average station location or elevation over time, which may introduce spurious trends within these data. This paper examines temperature trends within the 15 climate divisions of New England, comparing the NCDC's U.S. Divisional Data to the U.S. Historical Climate Network (USHCN) data. Correlation and multiple regression revealed that shifts in latitude, longitude, and elevation have affected the quality of the NCDC divisional data with respect to the USHCN. As a result, there may be issues with regard to their use in decadal‐ to century‐scale climate change studies.