Climate Observations : Data Quality Control and Time Series Homogenization

Climate Observations: Data Quality Control and Time Series Homogenization pulls together the different phases of the production of high-quality climatic datasets, allowing interested readers to obtain a coherent picture on the complexity and importance of this task. There are several new methods of time series homogenization, each very complex and fast developing. The thematic discussion of the production of high quality climatic datasets provides the opportunity to reduce errors, including the careful installation of meteorological instruments, the application of strict observing rules and inspections, and the use of sophistically developed statistical software to detect and remove errors or biases.

This book is intended for professionals working on climate data management at the national meteorological services, for the users of observed climatic data, and for students and researchers studying atmospheric and climate science.

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• Presents a wide variety of old and modern meteorological instruments, and the efforts to produce and save spatially and temporally fairly comparable observed climatic data
• Describes the research tasks and tools for which the reliability and accuracy of climatic data are particularly important
• Includes case studies to provide real-world context to the research presented
• Features benchmark datasets, which have been used for testing the stable operation and efficiency of homogenization methods
• Explains the use of semiautomatic quality control software, recently developed effective homogenization methods, their testing, and the related new concepts and statistical tools

Peter Domonkos is a Hungarian climatologist living in Spain since 2009. He is expert on statistical climatology, analysis of extreme climatic events, data quality control and time series homogenization. He is member of the Hungarian Meteorological Society and secretary of ESPERE (Environmental Science for Everybody Round the Earth). Between 2009 – 2015 Dr. Domonkos was a researcher of the University Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain), and is a free researcher since then. He has been developed an automatic homogenization method (ACMANT), which was found to be one of the most accurate methods by various international test experiments. Between 2013 and 2015 he led 4 international trainings on time series homogenization, sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization. He has 104 printed scientific publications.

Róbert Tóth is an experienced meteorologist with a demonstrated history of working in the environmental services industry. Skilled in meteorological measurements, international agreements on air quality protection, sustainable development, environmental compliance and emergency management. Strong research professional with a Master's Degree focused in Public Administration from University of Economy, Budapest. Now Head of Unit for Data Quality Control at Hungarian Meteorological Service since 2020. Responsible for the conventional precipitation monitoring network. Deputy Editor in Chief of Légkör (quarterly journal of Hungarian Meteorological Service and Hungarian Meteorological Society). In 2008-2009 president of UNEP Montreal Protocol Bureau. He gave lectures on meteorological observation and instruments at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest in the 90s.

László Nyitrai is a certified meteorologist, he graduated from meteorology at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest in 1985. He has worked for Hungarian Meteorological Service in the field of meteorological measurements, data archiving and climate tables. In addition, he dealt with the aspects of ionospheric physics affecting radio wave propagation, he collected records of ionospheric conditions for shortwave radio signal transport, and corresponded internationally in this topic.
He investigated the global trends, completeness and deficiencies of meteorological tropospheric and stratospheric upper air measurements and their presumed economic background in relation to the WMO member countries. He made attempts to calculate atmospheric moisture transport from radiosonde observations, and presented his studies in international conferences