Rescue and quality control of sub-daily meteorological data collected at Montevergine Observatory (Southern Apennines), 1884–1963

Abstract

Abstract. Here we present the rescue of sub-daily meteorological observations collected from 1884 to 1963 at Montevergine Observatory, located in the Southern Apennines in Italy. The recovered dataset consists of 3-daily observations of the following atmospheric variables: dry-bulb temperature, wet-bulb temperature, water vapour pressure, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, cloud type, cloud cover, rainfall, snowfall and precipitation type. The data, originally available only as paper-based records, have been digitized following the World Meteorological Organization standard practices. After a cross-check, the digitized data went through three different automatic quality control tests: the gross error test, which verifies whether the data are within acceptable range limits; the tolerance test, which flags whether values are above or below monthly climatological limits that are defined in accordance with a probability distribution model specific to each variable; and the temporal coherency test, which checks the rate of change and flags unrealistic jumps in consecutive values. The result of this process is the publication of a new historical dataset that includes, for the first time, digitized and quality-controlled sub-daily meteorological observations collected since the late 19th century in the Mediterranean region north of the 37th parallel. These data are critical to enhancing and complementing previously rescued sub-daily historical datasets – which are currently limited to atmospheric pressure observations only – in the central and northern Mediterranean regions. Furthermore, the Montevergine Observatory (MVOBS) dataset can enrich the understanding of high-altitude weather and climate variability, and it contributes to the improvement of the accuracy of reanalysis products prior the 1950s. Data are available on the NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) public repository and are associated with a DOI: https://doi.org/10.25921/cx3g-rj98 (Capozzi et al., 2019).

On the role of local and large-scale atmospheric variability in snow cover duration: a case study of Montevergine Observatory (Southern Italy)

“…The historical snow observations analysed in this study have been manually collected in the Montevergine Observatory (40.936502°N, 14.729150°E), a mountain site located at 1280 m above sea level in Southern Apennines in Italy. Specifically, snow depth (SD) measurements were collected on daily basis during the period from December 1931 to November 2008, with a few interruptions mainly located in the 1960s (Capozzi et al 2020). Unfortunately, the Observatory has no longer been manned since 2008 and the collection of several variables, including the snow depth, has been interrupted.…”

Rescue and quality control of historical geomagnetic measurement at SheShan Observatory, China

“…2. The "key input" approach is slower but has the lower error rate (Capozzi, 2020). After each month of data entry, the digitized data have been cross-checked with the original source values in order to identify and The aim of quality control (QC) is to check the continuity and reliability of geomagnetic observation data.…”

Rescue and quality control of historical geomagnetic measurement at Sheshan observatory, China

“…2. The "key input" approach is slower but has the lower error rate (Capozzi et al, 2020). After each month of data entry, we cross checked the digitized data with the original source values in order to identify and remove transcription errors.…”

“…"The geomagnetic jerks are due to interactions of the core field and the rapid time-varying core flow" (Kuang and Tangborn, 2011). Since Malin and Hodder (1982), Courtillot and Le Mouël (1984) discovered the geomagnetic jerk in 1969, 10 jerks have been detected in observatories from 1933 to 2020, of which 1969, 1978(Alexandrescu et al, 1996), 1991(De Michelis et al, 1998), 1999(Mandea et al, 2000Zhang et al, 2008a), 2003(Mandea and Olsen, 2007Feng et al, 2018;He et al, 2019(Kotzé, 2010, and 2014 (Brown et al, 2016;Kloss and Finlay, 2019;Finlay et al, 2016;Kang et al, 2020) were global events. In addition, there were two local events which occurred in 1949 (Mandea et al, 2000) and 2011 (Chulliat and Maus, 2014;Kotzé and Korte, 2016).…”