Improved Reconstruction of Global Precipitation since 1900

An improved land‐ocean global monthly precipitation anomaly reconstruction is developed for the period beginning in 1900. Reconstructions use the available historical data and statistics developed from the modern satellite-sampled period to analyze variations over the historical presatellite period. This paper documents the latest in a series of precipitation reconstructions developed by the authors. Although the reconstruction principleisstilltheminimizationofmean-squarederror,thislatestreconstructionincludesthefollowingthree major improvements over previous reconstructions: (i) an improvedmethod thatfirst produces an annualfirst guess, which is then adjusted using a monthly increment analysis; (ii) improved use of oceanic observations in the annual first guess using a canonical correlation analysis; and (iii) reinjection of gauge data where those data areavailable.Theseimprovements allowmoreconfidentanalysesandevaluationsofglobalprecipitation variations over the reconstruction period. Quantitative error estimates for the reconstruction are being developed and will be documented in a later paper.

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