Surface Temperature Analysis from Historical Data Sets for the ASOS and COOP Networks

It is important that changes of climate are not misrepresented as a result of changes in instrumentation. A statistical interpolation technique is being applied to quantify the systematic biases of daily maximum and minimum temperatures in two types of surface temperature observations: surface temperatures from the COOP network and ASOS network. The data in this study was collected from the United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) for all available stations of the Maximum-Minimum Temperature System (MMTS) and ASOS system. The systematic biases between the MMTS and ASOS and the bias variations were temporally and spatially analyzed and discussed. The result can be applicable for the integration of the historical surface temperature data in the MMTS and ASOS eras.