Design of a temperature error correction method used for meteorology and climate research

Abstract

Accurate air temperature data is necessary to conducting climate research, carbon tax, and emission reduction estimation. However, the temperature error of temperature data provided by a non-aspirated multi-plate radiation shield is on the order of 1 °C due to various factors, especially solar radiation. To reduce this error, a temperature error correction method based on a method of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and a method of extreme learning machine (ELM) for a radiation shield is proposed. The CFD method is employed to quantify the temperature errors of this type of shield. Then, the ELM method is adopted to form a universal temperature error correction equation. Finally, field experiments are performed to verify the correction accuracy. A 076B aspirated radiation shield served as a temperature reference. The root mean square error (RMSE) and the mean absolute error (MAE) between the measured temperature error results of a 41003 shield provided by the experiments and the corrected temperature error results from this correction method are 0.06 °C, and 0.056 °C, respectively. The RMSE and MAE of a 5980 shield are 0.074 °C and 0.062 °C, respectively. These results indicated that the temperature data might be expected to achieve the accuracy of 0.1 °C by using this correction method.