Smoothing data series by means of cubic splines: quality of approximation and introduction of a repeating spline approach

Wüst, Sabine; Wendt, Verena; Linz, Ricarda; Bittner, Michael

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-10-3453-2017

Articles | Volume 10, issue 9

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-10-3453-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-10-3453-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 10, issue 9

Research article

|

21 Sep 2017

Research article |

| 21 Sep 2017

Smoothing data series by means of cubic splines: quality of approximation and introduction of a repeating spline approach

Sabine Wüst, Verena Wendt, Ricarda Linz, and Michael Bittner

Data sets

COSPAR International Reference Atmosphere (CIRA-86): Global Climatology of Atmospheric Parameters Committee on Space Research http://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/4996e5b2f53ce0b1f2072adadaeda262

Short summary

Cubic splines with equidistant spline sampling points are a common method in atmospheric science for the approximation of background conditions by means of filtering superimposed fluctuations from a data series. However, splines can generate considerable artificial oscillations in the background and the residuals. We introduce a repeating spline approach which is able to significantly reduce this phenomenon and to apply it to TIMED-SABER vertical temperature profiles from 2010 to 2014.