Exploratory Analysis of the Difference between Temperature Observations Recorded by ASOS and Conventional Methods

Abstract The Automated Surface Observing System is currently replacing conventional observations at the National Weather Service, the Federal Aviation Administration, and other stations that report hourly observations. From a climatological viewpoint, it is necessary to compare the data from the old and new measuring systems in order to gain an understanding of their differences. These differences may become important when using time series for applications such as the computation of climatic normals, the development of homogeneous datasets for long periods of record for the investigation of climatic change, the placing of events into historical perspective, or the analysis of extreme weather events. This exploratory study of temperature data was undertaken to determine first whether there is a data continuity problem between the two observing systems and second, if there is a problem, to identify the magnitude of the problem. The most important conclusion from this study is that differences in site chara...