Quality control and homogenization of daily meteorological data in the trans-boundary region of the Jhelum River basin

Abstract

Many studies such as climate variability, climate change, trend analysis, hydrological designs, agriculture decision-making etc. require long-term homogeneous datasets. Since homogeneous climate data is not available for climate analysis in Pakistan and India, the present study emphases on an extensive quality control and homogenization of daily maximum temperature, minimum temperature and precipitation data in the Jhelum River basin, Pakistan and India. A combination of different quality control methods and relative homogeneity tests were applied to achieve the objective of the study. To check the improvement after homogenization, correlation coefficients between the test and reference series calculated before and after the homogenization process were compared with each other. It was found that about 0.59%, 0.78% and 0.023% of the total data values are detected as outliers in maximum temperature, minimum temperature and precipitation data, respectively. About 32% of maximum temperature, 50% of minimum temperature and 7% of precipitation time series were inhomogeneous, in the Jhelum River basin. After the quality control and homogenization, 1% to 11% improvement was observed in the infected climate variables. This study concludes that precipitation daily time series are fairly homogeneous, except two stations (Naran and Gulmarg), and of a good quality. However, maximum and minimum temperature datasets require an extensive quality control and homogeneity check before using them into climate analysis in the Jhelum River basin.