Network-Induced Variability in Global-Scale Air Temperatures (Robeson)

As an example of network-induced variability, the warm air temperature anomalies that occurred during 1988 are resampled using station networks from other years (Figure 1). Even though the underlying field is the same in all instances, changing station networks cause the terrestrially-averaged air temperature anomaly to vary considerably. The network from 1981, in particular, underestimates the terrestrial average by over 0.3 degrees Celsius. A map of air tempertaure anomalies that uses the 1981 station locations to resample the 1988 air temperature anomaly field shows that a warm event in northern Asia is unresolved by the 1981 network, thus biasing the map and resulting spatial averages (Figure 2).

References:

Robeson, S. M. (1995) "A spatial resampling perspective on the depiction of global air temperature anomalies," Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 76, 1179-1183.

Robeson, S. M. (1995) "Resampling of network-induced variability in estimates of terrestrial air temperature change," Climatic Change, 29, 213-229.

Robeson, S. M. (1994) "Influence of spatial sampling and interpolati on on estimates of terrestrial air temperature change," Climate Research, 4(2), 119-126.