Home.
Please, download the Monthly Benchmark Dataset .
Please, check our literature review on homogenisation .
Picture from the Expert meeting in Oslo,November 2009.
Early instrumental series are the main source for climate information in the 18th and the first part of the 19th century. Combining those series with modern observations are often problematic due to the lack of proper calibration of the instrument, confusion about the units used, generally incomplete metadata, urban heat island effect, changing exposure of the instruments and numerous relocations. Particularly in northern Europe the long sun duration during summer might also create specific problems. The aim of the meeting should be to discuss robust methods for homogenisation of early instrumental series in northern Europe in particular.
Picture from the R-Summer School in Patras,September 2009.
Several HOME members participated at the R-Summer School in Patras. The school covered from very simple topics such as data inoput/output and manipulation with R, to programming strategies, graphical representation and complex statistical functions. The tuition received will help the action members to produce our final software products and therafter contribute to achieve sucessfully our goals. The course materials are available here: Silvia Terzago presentations .
Long instrumental climate records are the basis of climate research. However, these series are usually affected by inhomogeneities (artificial shifts), due to changes in the measurement conditions (relocations, instrumentation and others).As the artificial shifts often have the same magnitude as the climate signal, such as long-term variations, trends or cycles, a direct analysis of the raw data series can lead to wrong conclusions about climate change.
In order to deal with this crucial problem many statistical homogenisation procedures have been developed for detection and correction of these inhomogeneities. At present only a limited number of publications intercompare some common methods and their impact on the climate record.The large number of different methods could be seen as a weakness in the science and is a challenge for the climatological community to address.
There is therefore a need for a coordinated European initiative in order to produce standard methods designed to facilitate such comparisons and promote the most efficient methods of homogenisation.
The Action's main objective is to achieve a general method for homogenising climate and environmental datasets.The method will be derived from the most adapted statistical procedures for detection and correction of varying parameters at different space and time scales.
See Memorandum of Understanding for more information.
Picture from the last Management Commitee, held in Bologna, May 2009.
The action is structured in 5 working groups:
- WG1- Inventory of existing homogenisation methods and benchmark dataset preparation.
- WG2 Comparison and evaluation of existing detection methods.
- WG3 Comparison and evaluation of correction methods for annual to monthly data.
- WG4 Methods for correction of daily data.
- WG5 Presentation and release of the new common method.
