final_program_abstracts[1]

11 IMSC Session Program
Practical implementation of statistical reconstruction
methods in a non-ideal world
Monday - Plenary Session 4
N.A. Rayner
The reconstruction, using statistical techniques, of useful globally complete fields of
irregularly and often sparsely sampled climate variables for the last century is
complicated by the real-world’s refusal to conform to theoretical ideals. This
presentation will consider the application of these techniques to various variables, e.g.
sea surface temperature, ocean temperature and salinity, land and marine air
temperature, sea level pressure, precipitation, etc and use practical examples to
illustrate some of the main challenges, including:
• Estimation of covariance between observations;
• Reconstruction of long-term changes;
• Reconstruction of adequate levels of variability;
• Ensuring homogeneity in the face of changing observational sampling;
• Production of comprehensive uncertainty estimates, including accommodation
of correlated errors in reconstruction techniques;
• Reconstruction of historically data-poor regions;
• Meaningful presentation of uncertainty estimates.
Abstracts 29