A NASA GISTEMPv4 Observational Uncertainty Ensemble

Abstract

AbstractThe historical global temperature record is an essential data product for quantifying the variability and change of the Earth system. In recent years, better characterization of observational uncertainty in global and hemispheric trends has become available, but the methodologies are not necessarily applicable to analyses at smaller regional areas, or monthly or seasonal means, where station sparsity and other systematic issues contribute to greater uncertainty. This study presents a gridded uncertainty ensemble of historical surface temperature anomalies from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Surface Temperature (GISTEMP) product. This ensemble characterizes the complex spatial and temporal correlation structure of uncertainty, enabling better uncertainty propagation for climate and applied science in applications of historical temperature products at spatial scales from global to regional and temporal scales from centennial to monthly. This work details the methodology for generating the uncertainty ensemble, presents key statistics of the uncertainty evolution over space and time, and provides best practices for using the uncertainty ensemble in future studies. Summary statistics from the uncertainty ensemble agree well with the previous GISTEMP global uncertainty assessment, providing confidence in both.