Statistical Analysis of Daily Relationships Among Temperature, Wind Speed, Humidity, Insolation, Downward Long Wave Radiation, and Rainfall in the Tao/Triton Data

• Activity Number: 254
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, July 30, 2012 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics and the Environment
• Author(s): Matthew Marler*+
• Keywords: Weather ; Transient Climate Response ; NOAA TAO /TRITON Data ; Multivariate Nonstationary Time Series

Abstract

The "climate sensitivity" is defined as the change in globally averaged Earth surface temperature in response to a doubling of the atmospheric concentration of CO2. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)[2007] reported a 66% credible interval of 2K - 4.5K for this attribute of Earth climate, a widely quoted figure.

A more useful (potentially) quantity is the transient climate sensitivity (TCS, or transient climate response, TCR), the change in globally averaged surface temperature over a specified time (e.g., 40, 80, or 160 years), to a specific change in CO2 (which could be a doubling.)

In this paper, we present an estimate of the TCR based on an analysis of particular data, that is, data collected at a particular place for years on end, day and night, but averaged over comparatively short intervals of 5 minutes. We analyze matched data (that is data vectors, or vector time series) of temperature, rainfall, humidity, downwelling shortwave radiation, downwelling longwave radiation, and windspeed. We shall be estimating what is generally called a "climate" response to CO2 increase by studying the weather changes in some particular locations.