Emergence temperatures are physical constants useful for describing analyte retention when progrmmed temperature gas chromatographic operating parameters are properly standardized. A combination of all the column operating conditions is standardized by the proposed method, therefore a wide variety of conditions (column length, program-rate, flow-rate, amount of stationary phase, etc.) may be used. Reproducibility is unaffected by the size, shape, or polarity of the analytes. In addition, tables of emergence temperatures provide an excellent means of identification of unknowns because reference compounds can be selected that emerge close to the compounds to be identified.