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Abstract While many studies comparing atmospheric reanalysis and surface observations have focused on the similarity of mean fields, trends, or frequencies of extreme events, very few have assessed how similar surface observations and reanalysis data sets are in terms of their specific identification of extreme temperature event days. Here, we assess the similarity between surface observations and three reanalysis products: ERA5, ERA5‐LAND, and NARR, in terms of the days on which they identify extreme heat and cold events for the period 1979–2016 at 230 locations in the United States and Canada. Cold events have a greater match than heat events. ERA5 has the greatest match percentage with station data across the study region. Match percentage is greatest in midlatitude, continental locations, with poorer performance in coastal areas, and the Arctic.
Sheridan et al. (Sun,) studied this question.