Articles | Volume 18, issue 5
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-1071-2022
https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-1071-2022
Research article
 | 
17 May 2022
Research article |  | 17 May 2022

Quantifying and reducing researcher subjectivity in the generation of climate indices from documentary sources

George C. D. Adamson, David J. Nash, and Stefan W. Grab

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Cited articles

Adamson, G. C. D. and Nash, D. J.: Documentary reconstruction of monsoon rainfall variability over western India, 1781–1860, Clim. Dynam., 42, 749–769, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-013-1825-6, 2014. 
Alexandre, P.: Le climat en Europe au moyen âge: contribution à l'histoire des variations climatiques de 1000 à 1425, d'après les narratives de l'Europe Occidentale, Recherches d'histoire et de sciences sociales 24, Éditions de l'École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1163/182539188x00438, 1987. 
Baron, W. R.: Historical climate records from the northeastern United States, 1640 to 1900, in: Climate Since A.D. 1500, edited by: Bradley, R. S. and Jones, P. D., Routledge, London, 74–91, ISBN 9781138178144, 1995. 
Baron, W. R., Gordon, G. A., Borns, H. W., and Smith, D. C.: Frost-free record reconstruction for eastern Massachusetts, 1733–1980, J. Clim. Appl. Meteorol., 23, 317–319, https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0450(1984)023<0317:FFRRFE>2.0.CO;2, 1984. 
Bauch, M., Labbé, T., Engel, A., and Seifert, P.: A prequel to the Dantean Anomaly: the precipitation seesaw and droughts of 1302 to 1307 in Europe, Clim. Past, 16, 2343–2358, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-16-2343-2020, 2020. 
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Short summary
Descriptions of climate held in archives are a valuable source of past climate variability, but there is a large potential for error in assigning quantitative indices (e.g. −2, v. dry to +2, v. wet) to descriptive data. This is the first study to examine this uncertainty. We gave the same dataset to 71 postgraduate students and 6 professional scientists, findings that error can be minimized by taking an average of indices developed by eight postgraduates and only two professional climatologists.
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