An empirical characterisation of signal versus noise in CO2 data

I. G. Enting

doi:10.3402/tellusb.v54i4.16667

An empirical characterisation of signal versus noise in CO2 data

Tellus B: Chemical and Physical Meteorology

Volume 54 (2002): Issue 4

By: I. G. Enting

Open Access

|Jan 2002

Abstract

Uncertainties in the interpretations of CO₂ data arise from errors in the observations and model relations. The space–time variations of CO₂ on the global scale are analysed in terms of the singular-value decomposition, in order to obtain a characterisation of observational error that matches the requirements of global-scale estimation of fluxes. It is found that for monthly-mean data, a first-order moving average model of error is a far better representation than earlier assumptions of independent white noise.

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