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Dew Point Temperature

This section compares MERRA-2 2-meter dew point temperature to observations reported to the National Center for Environmental Information (NCEI – formerly National Climatic Data Center). Selected surface sites from the NCEI Integrated Surface Database (ISD) files are used for the hourly MERRA-2 comparisons. Global "Summary of the Day" (GSOD) files are used for the comparison to the daily mean MERRA-2 dew point temperature.

Hourly

Hourly Dew Point Temperature

Density plot of the 2-D histograms comparing MERRA-2 hourly dew point temperatures with station observations from the selected NCEI ISD files for the years 2001-2020. Darker reds indicate a higher number of matched pairs within the 2-D histogram.

Hourly Dew Point Temperature

As with the daily average validation, the hourly validation shows good clustering along the 1:1 correlation line.

Daily Average

Daily Dew Point Temperature

Density plot of the 2-D histograms comparing MERRA-2 daily averaged dew point temperatures with station observations from the NCEI GSOD files for 1981–2020. Darker reds indicate a higher number of matched pairs within the 2-D histogram.

Daily Dew Point

Plot Notes

  • The legend on each density plot gives the site observation mean, bias with MERRA-2, root mean squared error (RMSE), equation of the line for the linear least squares fit, coefficient of determination, and number of data pairs to the plotted values.
  • The color bar along the right side of the density plot provides a measure of the frequency of the data pairs per bin in plot.