Bias Corrections for Historical Sea Surface Temperatures Based on Marine Air Temperatures

Because of changes in SST sampling methods in the 1940s and earlier, there are biases in the earlier period SSTs relative to the most recent 50 years. Published results from the Met Office have shown the need for historic bias correction and have developed several correction techniques. An independent bias-correction method is developed here from an analysis using nighttime marine air temperatures and SST observations from the Comprehensive Ocean–Atmosphere Data Set (COADS). Because this method is independent from methods proposed by the Met Office, the differences indicate uncertainties and similarities indicate where users may have more confidence in the bias correction. The new method gives results that are broadly consistent with the latest Met Office bias estimates. However, this bias estimate has a stronger annual cycle of bias in the Northern Hemisphere in comparison with the Met Office estimate. Both estimates have midlatitude annual cycles, with the greatest bias in the cold season, and both have a small annual cycle in the Tropics. From the 1850s into the early twentieth century both bias estimates increase with time, although this estimate increases slightly less than the Met Office estimate over that period. Near-global average temperatures are not greatly affected by the choice of bias correction. However, the need for a bias correction in some periods may introduce greater uncertainty in the global averages. Differences in the bias corrections suggest that this bias-induced uncertainty in the near-global average may be 0.1°C in the nineteenth century, with less uncertainty in the early twentieth century.