estimation. 25. Materials and methods are available as supporting material on Science Online. 26. F. J. Wentz, M. Schabel, Nature 403, 414 (2000). 27. T. M. Smith, R. W. Reynolds, J. Clim.18, 2021 (2005). 28. P. D. Jones, A. Moberg, J. Clim. 16, 206 (2003). 29. HadCRUT2v is the designation for version 2 of the (variance-corrected) Hadley Centre/Climatic Research Unit surface temperature data se...

Historical changes in instrumentation and recording practices have severely compromised the temporal homogeneity of radiosonde data, a crucial issue for the determination of long-term trends. Methods developed to deal with these homogeneity problems have been applied to a near–globally distributed network of 87 stations using monthly temperature data at mandatory pressure levels, covering the p...

The increased application of digital terrestrial microwave radio links in communication networks has renewed attention in techniques of estimating the probability of multipath fading distributions. Nevertheless, the unpredictable variation of the wireless transmission medium remains a challenge. It has been ascertained that the refraction of electromagnetic waves is due to the inhomogeneous spa...

Combining geometrical optics (GO) and wave optics (WO), the COSMIC data analysis and archive center (CDAAC) retrieved two sets of dry atmosphere temperatures (T) from COSMIC GPS radio occultation (GPS-RO), which are called atmPrf2010 and atmPrf2013. In atmPrf2010, the sewing height between WO and GO varies between 10 and 20 km, but is fixed at 20 km for atmPrf2013. The height resolution of the ...

Estimation of precipitable water (PW) in the atmosphere from ground-based Global Positioning System (GPS) essentially involves modeling the zenith hydrostatic delay (ZHD) in terms of surface Pressure (Ps) and subtracting it from the corresponding values of zenith tropospheric delay (ZTD) to estimate the zenith wet (non-hydrostatic) delay (ZWD). This further involves establishing an appropriate ...

Basic traditional parametric statistical techniques are used widely in climatic studies for characterizing the level (central tendency) and variability of variables, assessing linear relationships (including trends), detection of climate change, quality control and assessment, identification of extreme events, etc. These techniques may involve estimation of parameters such as the mean (a measur...