Antarctic Land Surface Temperature (part 3)

In this episode I derive mean annual temperature anomalies for the three main categories of base location and examine warming trends over time

Coastal Bases (0 – 20km from nearest coast)

In part 2 of this series we noted that the 29 bases in this location category fell into four distinct temperature profiles, the warmest of which is enjoyed by the 13 coastal stations of the peninsula. What I need to do now is to convert the raw temperature data for these stations into anomalies and boil these down into four grand mean anomalies.

Calculation of temperature anomalies requires declaration of a climate normal, being a common period when all stations were collecting the same thing at the same time. Typically this is a 30-year collection span that is common to all data sources. A span of 30-years is overly optimistic for the sporadic base record so I was aiming for something more conservative along the lines of a 5-year span. Incredibly, even this wasn’t to be, for there wasn’t a single year between 1954 and 2022 when all 13 stations managed to hit 50% daily data capture all at the same time. No climate normal means no temperature a…