Noone, S, Murphy, C, Coll, C, Matthews, TR, Mullan, D, Wilby, RL and Walsh, S (2015) Homogenisation and analysis of an expanded long-term monthly rainfall network for the Island of Ireland (1850-2010). International Journal of Climatology. ISSN 1097-0088

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Abstract

Long-term precipitation series are critical for understanding emerging changes to the hydrological cycle. To this end we construct a homogenised Island of Ireland Precipitation (IIP) network comprising 25 stations and a composite series covering the period 1850-2010, providing the second- longest regional precipitation archive in the British-Irish Isles. We expand the existing catalogue of long-term precipitation records for the island by recovering archived data for an additional eight stations. Following bridging and updating of stations HOMER homogenisation software is used to detect breaks using pairwise and joint detection. Twenty-five breakpoints are detected across 14 stations, and the majority (20) are corroborated by metadata. Assessment of variability and change in homogenised and extended precipitation records reveal positive (winter) and negative (summer) trends. Trends in records covering the typical period of digitisation (1941 onwards) are not always representative of longer records. Furthermore, trends in post-homogenisation series change magnitude and even direction at some stations. While cautionary flags are raised for some series, confidence in the derived network is high given attention paid to metadata, coherence of behaviour across the network and consistency of findings with other long-term climatic series such as England and Wales precipitation. As far as we are aware, this work represents the first application of HOMER to a long- term precipitation network and bodes well for use in other regions. It is expected that the homogenised IIP network will find wider utility in benchmarking and supporting climate services across the Island of Ireland, a sentinel location in the North Atlantic.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Noone, S., Murphy, C., Coll, J., Matthews, T., Mullan, D., Wilby, R. L. and Walsh, S. (2015), Homogenization and analysis of an expanded long-term monthly rainfall network for the Island of Ireland (1850–2010). Int. J. Climatol, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org10.1002/joc.4522. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving
Uncontrolled Keywords:	0401 Atmospheric Sciences, 0905 Civil Engineering, 0907 Environmental Engineering
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences
Divisions:	Natural Sciences & Psychology (closed 31 Aug 19)
Publisher:	Wiley
Date Deposited:	08 Mar 2016 09:12
Last Modified:	04 Sep 2021 13:59
DOI or ID number:	10.1002/joc.4522
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/1961

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