Effects of undetected data quality issues on climatological analyses

Hunziker, Stefan; Brönnimann, Stefan; Calle, Juan; Moreno, Isabel; Andrade, Marcos; Ticona, Laura; Huerta, Adrian; Lavado-Casimiro, Waldo

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-14-1-2018

Articles | Volume 14, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-14-1-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-14-1-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 1

Research article

|

03 Jan 2018

Research article |

| 03 Jan 2018

Effects of undetected data quality issues on climatological analyses

Stefan Hunziker, Stefan Brönnimann, Juan Calle, Isabel Moreno, Marcos Andrade, Laura Ticona, Adrian Huerta, and Waldo Lavado-Casimiro

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-14-1-2018-supplement

Data sets

DECADE - Data on climate and Extreme weather for the Central AnDEs S. Hunziker, S. Brönnimann, M. Andrade, I. Moreno, J. Calle, W. Lavado Casimiro, G. Rosas, G. Carrasco, Y. Castellon, and A. Rossa http://www.geography.unibe.ch/research/climatology_group/research_projects/decade/index_eng.html

Short summary

Many data quality problems occurring in manned weather station observations are hardly detected with common data quality control methods. We investigated the effects of undetected data quality issues and found that they may reduce the correlation coefficients of station pairs, deteriorate the performance of data homogenization methods, increase the spread of individual station trends, and significantly bias regional trends. Applying adequate quality control approaches is of utmost importance.