West Antarctic Composite Temperature Records

This effort builds on a previously published emissivity modeling technique that uses only air temperature, TA, and passive microwave brightness temperature, TB, data (e.g. Shuman et al., 1995) and recently developed infrared temperature, TIR, data sets (e.g. Comiso 2000). All three types of data have various limitations: 1) the TA record is relatively short and may have data gaps; 2) the TIR record requires calibration and has data gaps due to clouds; and 3) the TB record requires calibration especially due to periods of emissivity variability related to melt events.

Emphasis was also placed on understanding the uncertainty of the resulting temperature record so that confidence in these data could be maximized. The resulting data set provides a daily-average temperature time series for the sites in West Antarctica with constrained uncertainties. It effectively minimizes the limitations of all three types of input data.