Creation of a representative climatological database for Hungary from 1870 to 2020

Abstract

Climate studies, particularly those that are related to climate change, require long, high-quality controlled data sets, which are representative both spatially and temporally. Changing the conditions of measurements, for example relocating the station, or changing the frequency and timing of measurements, or changing the instruments used can cause breaks in the time series. To avoid these problems, data errors and inhomogeneities are eliminated and the data gaps are filled by using the MASH (Multiple Analysis of Series for Homogenization, Szentimrey, 1999, 2008) homogenization procedure. The Hungarian meteorological observation network was upgraded significantly in the last decades. Homogenization of the data series raises the question of how to homogenize long and short data series together within the same process. It is possible to solve this with the MASH method due it has solid mathematical foundations, which make it suitable for such purposes. The solution includes the synchronization of the common parts’ inhomogeneities within three (or more) different MASH processing of the three (or more) datasets with different lengths depending on the time periods and elements. After the homogenization process, the station data series were interpolated to a 0.1 degree regular grid covering the whole area of Hungary. The MISH (Meteorological Interpolation based on Surface Homogenized Data Basis; Szentimrey and Bihari, 2007) program system was used for this purpose. The MISH procedure was developed specifically for the interpolation of various meteorological elements. In the case of mean temperature, we also renewed the MISH modeling, as compared to previous years, the number of homogenized stations doubled due to the new work, so it was expedient to model the climate statistical parameters with this extended station system. Time series of daily mean temperature and precipitation sum for the period 1870–2020 for Hungary were used in this study. As a result, the longest ever homogenized, gridded daily data sets became available for Hungary. The method described here can also be applied to produce representative datasets for other meteorological elements.