ON THE DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF HOMOGENIZED CLIMATE DATASETS

At the National Climatic Data Center, two basic approaches to making h omogeneity adjustments to climate data have been developed. The first is based on the use of metadata (station history files) and is used in the adjustments made to the U.S. Historical Climatology Network month ly dataset. The second approach is non-metadata based and was develope d for use with the Global Historical Climatology Network dataset, sinc e there are not extensive station history files for most stations in t he dataset. In this paper the two methodologies are reviewed and the a djustments made using each are compared, then the results are discusse d. Last, some brief guidelines on the limitations and uses of these da ta are provided.