Temporal Homogenization of Monthly Radiosonde Temperature Data. Part I: Methodology

Historical changes in instrumentation and recording practices have severely compromised the temporal homogeneity of radiosonde data, a crucial issue for the determination of long-term trends. Methods developed to deal with these homogeneity problems have been applied to a near-globally distributed network of 87 stations using monthly temperature data at mandatory pressure levels, covering the period 1948-97. The homogenization process begins with the identification of artificial discontinuities through visual examination of graphical and textual materials, including temperature time series, transformations of the temperature data, and independent indicators of climate variability, as well as ancillary information such as station history metadata. To ameliorate each problem encountered, a modification was applied in the form of data adjustment or data deletion. A companion paper (Part II) reports on various analyses, particularly trend related, based on the modified data resulting from the method presented here.