Premium
Smoothing of climate time series revisited
Author(s) -
Mann Michael E.
Publication year - 2008
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 - 10.1029/2008gl034716
Subject(s) - series (stratigraphy) , smoothing , time series , computer science , term (time) , econometrics , climatology , environmental science , mathematics , algorithm , statistics , machine learning , geology , paleontology , physics , quantum mechanics
We present an easily implemented method for smoothing climate time series, generalizing upon an approach previously described by Mann (2004). The method adaptively weights the three lowest order time series boundary constraints to optimize the fit with the raw time series. We apply the method to the instrumental global mean temperature series from 1850–2007 and to various surrogate global mean temperature series from 1850–2100 derived from the CMIP3 multimodel intercomparison project. These applications demonstrate that the adaptive method systematically out‐performs certain widely used default smoothing methods, and is more likely to yield accurate assessments of long‐term warming trends.