Peter W Thorne

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Verified

Peter verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• PhD
• Professor (Full) at National University of Ireland, Maynooth

Archives of observed weather data present unique opportunities for scientists to obtain long time series of the historical climate for many regions of the world. Unfortunately, most of these observational records are to-date available only on paper, and thus require digitization and transcription to facilitate analysis of climatic trends. Here we p...

In a rapidly changing climate, evidence-based decision-making benefits from up-to-date and timely information. Here we compile monitoring datasets (published here https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15327155 Smith et al., 2025a) to produce updated estimates for key indicators of the state of the climate system: net emissions of greenhouse gases and shor...

We assess and illustrate the benefits of high-altitude attainment of balloon-borne radiosonde soundings, up to and beyond 10 hPa level compared to e.g. 30 hPa, at operational stations and at sites of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) Reference Upper Air Network (GRUAN). We first discuss technical challenges and the possible solutions for b...

The completion of the Sixth Assessment Cycle of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides a unique opportunity to understand where the world stands on climate-change-related risks to natural and human systems at the global level, as well as for specific regions and sectors. Since its Third Assessment Report (AR3), released 2 dec...

he Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that “it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.” One key piece of evidence for this is the global average of the instrumental record of surface temperature. A change in surface temperature of 1.5°C relative to a reference “prei...

We analyse extreme daily minimum temperatures in winter months over the island of Ireland from 1950-2022. We model the marginal distributions of extreme winter minima using a generalised Pareto distribution (GPD), capturing temporal and spatial non-stationarities in the parameters of the GPD. We investigate two independent temporal non-stationariti...

We investigate the changing nature of the frequency, magnitude, and spatial extent of extreme temperatures in Ireland from 1942 to 2020. We develop an extreme value model that captures spatial and temporal non-stationarity in extreme daily maximum temperature data. We model the tails of the marginal variables using the generalised Pareto distributi...

The completion of the Sixth Assessment Cycle of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides a unique opportunity to understand where the world stands on climate change-related risks to natural and human systems, at the global level as well as for specific regions and sectors. Since its Third Assessment Report, released two decades...

The most noticeable and damaging manifestation of human‐induced climate change is the increasing likelihood of certain extreme weather events. As defined in the IPCC sixth assessment report, compound extremes can lead to extreme impacts that are much larger than the sum of the impacts due to the occurrence of individual extremes alone. Of these com...

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments are the trusted source of scientific evidence for climate negotiations taking place under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Evidence-based decision-making needs to be informed by up-to-date and timely information on key indicators of the state of the clim...

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments are the trusted source of scientific evidence for climate negotiations taking place under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Evidence-based decision-making needs to be informed by up-to-date and timely information on key indicators of the state of the clim...

The majority of available climate data in global digital archives consist of data only from the 1940s or 1950s onwards, and many of these series have gaps and/or are available for only a subset of the variables which were actually observed. However, there exist billions of historical weather observations from the 1700s, 1800s, and early 1900s that...

Independent Expert Report to the European Commission

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments are the trusted source of scientific evidence for climate negotiations taking place under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), including the first global stocktake under the Paris Agreement that will conclude at COP28 in December 2023. Evidence-based decisio...

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments are the trusted source of scientific evidence for climate negotiations taking place under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), including the first global stocktake under the Paris Agreement that will conclude at COP28 in December 2023. Evidence-based decisio...

The IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report is based on the three Working Group contributions to the AR6 as well as on the three Special Reports prepared in this assessment cycle.

This analysis highlights the potential value in reanalysing early national meteorological records from around the world. These were oftentimes measured via techniques that preceded standardisation of instrumentation and methods of observation and thus could be subject to considerable biases and uncertainties. This analysis uses the techniques pione...

State‐of‐the‐art homogenisation approaches for any test site rely upon the availability of a sufficient number of neighbouring sites with similar climatic conditions and a sufficient quantity of overlapping measurements. These conditions are not always met, particularly in poorly sampled regions and epochs. Modern sparse‐input reanalysis products w...

If climate services are to lead to effective use of climate information in decision-making to enable the transition to a climate-smart, climate-ready world, then the question of trust in the products and services is of paramount importance. The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) has been actively grappling with how to build such trust; provisi...

While the real‐world has warmed in one unique way, the available data, which is spatio‐temporally incomplete and contains biases of unknown nature and timing, means this quantity can only ever be estimated. Craigmile and Guttorp (2022) propose an approach that optimally combines the range of existing products to gain a refined estimate. Implicit in...

We provide an updated sea level dataset for Dublin for the period 1938–2016 at yearly resolution. Using a newly collated sea level record for Dublin Port, as well as two nearby tide gauges at Arklow and Howth Harbour, we perform data quality checks and calibration of the Dublin Port record by adjusting the biased high water level measurements that...

Anthropogenic forcing is driving energy accumulation in the Earth system, including increases in the sensible heat content of the atmosphere, as measured by dry‐bulb temperature—the metric that is almost universally used for communications about climate change. The atmosphere is also moistening, though, representing an accumulation of latent heat,...

There is considerable import in creating more complete, better understood holdings of early meteorological data. Such data permit an improved understanding of climate variability and long-term changes. Early records are particularly incomplete in the tropics, with implications for estimates of global and regional temperature. There is also a relati...

Observational records are more often than not influenced by residual non‐climatic factors which must be detected and adjusted for prior to their usage. In this work, we present a novel approach, named Radiosounding HARMonization (RHARM), providing a homogenized data set of temperature, humidity and wind profiles along with an estimation of the meas...

We investigate the changing nature of the frequency, magnitude and spatial extent of extreme temperature in Ireland from 1960 to 2019. We develop an extreme value model that captures spatial and temporal non-stationarity in extreme daily maximum temperature data. We model the tails of the marginal variables using the generalised Pareto distribution...

The highest currently recognised air temperature (33.3 °C) ever recorded in the Republic of Ireland was logged at Kilkenny Castle in 1887. The original observational record however no longer exists. Given that Ireland is now the only country in Europe to have a national heat record set in the 19th century, a reassessment of the verity of this recor...

We provide an updated sea level dataset for Dublin for the period 1938 to 2016 at yearly resolution. Using a newly collated sea level record for Dublin Port, as well as two nearby tide gauges at Arklow and Howth Harbour, we perform data quality checks and calibration of the Dublin Port record by adjusting the biased high water level measurements th...

There is considerable import in creating more complete, better understood, holdings of early meteorological data. Such data permit an improved understanding of climate variability and long-term changes. Early records are particularly incomplete in the tropics, with implications for estimates of global and regional temperature. There is also a relat...

Observational records are more often than not influenced by residual non-climatic factors which must be detected and adjusted for prior to their usage. Moreover, measurement uncertainties should be properly quantified and validated. In this work we present a novel approach, named RHARM (Radiosounding HARMonization), to provide a homogenized dataset...

The RHARM (Radiosounding HARMonization) algorithm is the first to provide homogenized radiosonde-based records of temperature, relative humidity and wind profiles since 1978, alongside an estimation of the observational uncertainty for each observation and pressure level. The algorithm and the dataset are presented in the companion paper. In this p...

The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that warming of the climate system since the start of the instrumental record was unequivocal. While this conclusion does not solely rest upon the surface temperature record, this record is a key aspect underpinning this finding. Herein is discussed the observati...

The Working Group I (WGI) contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) assess the physical science basis of climate change. As part of that contribution, this Technical Summary (TS) is designed to bridge between the comprehensive assessment of the WGI Chapters and its Summary for Policymakers (SPM). It...

This paper outlines progress of the Copernicus Climate Change Service's (C3S) Global Land and Marine Observations Database service in securing data sources and introduces the data upload component. We present details of land and marine data holdings inventoried, highlighting priority needs in terms of periods, regions and Essential Climate Variable...

This study develops an innovative approach to homogenize discontinuities in both mean and variance in global sub-daily radiosonde temperature data from 1958-2018. First, temperature natural variations and changes are estimated using reanalyses and removed from the radiosonde data to construct monthly and daily difference series. A Penalized Maximal...

Observations from the historical meteorological observing network contain many artefacts of non‐climatic origin which must be accounted for prior to using these data in climate applications. State‐of‐the‐art homogenisation approaches use various flavours of pairwise comparison between a target station and candidate neighbour station series. Such ap...

The Citizens’ Assembly, a form of deliberative mini-public, tasked 99 ordinary Irish citizens with the responsibility of deliberating on five topics, after which they made recommendations to government. Throughout assembly meetings members were presented with up-to-date accurate information from experts. ‘How the State can make Ireland a leader in...

This paper describes the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) Reference Upper-Air Network (GRUAN) approach to managing the transition from the Vaisala RS92 to the Vaisala RS41 as the operational radiosonde. The goal of GRUAN is to provide long-term high-quality reference observations of upper-air essential climate variables (ECVs) such as tempera...

In the last two decades, technological progress has not only seen improvements to the quality of atmospheric upper-air observations but also provided the opportunity to design and implement automated systems able to replace measurement procedures typically performed manually. Radiosoundings, which remain one of the primary data sources for weather...

Societal dependence on, and commercial and scientific exploitation of Earth-Oriented remote sensing from satellites is growing at an exponential rate. The comprehensive EU Copernicus programme provides a major contribution to the global effort, but even so, to achieve the necessary global and temporal coverage requires synergistic cooperation and a...

Day-to-day variations in surface air temperature affect society in many ways, but daily surface air temperature measurements are not available everywhere. Therefore, a global daily picture cannot be achieved with measurements made in situ alone and needs to incorporate estimates from satellite retrievals. This article presents the science developed...

Abstract. In the last two decades, technological progress has not only seen improvements to the quality of atmospheric upper-air observations, but also provided the opportunity to design and implement automated systems able to replace measurement procedures typically performed manually. Radiosoundings, which remain one of the primary data sources f...

A global inventory of early instrumental meteorological measurements is compiled that comprises thousands of mostly nondigitized series, pointing to the potential of weather data rescue.

Abstract. This paper describes the GRUAN-wide approach to manage the transition from the Vaisala RS92 to the Vaisala RS41 as the operational radiosonde. The goal of the GCOS Reference Upper-Air Network (GRUAN) is to provide long-term high-quality reference observations of upper air Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) such as temperature and water va...

The Global Land and Marine Observations Database aims to produce a comprehensive land-based meteorological data archive and inventory. This requires the compilation of available information on data from land-based meteorological stations from all known available in situ meteorological data repositories/sources at multiple timescales (e.g. sub-daily...

Instrumental meteorological measurements from periods prior to the start of national weather services are designated “early instrumental data.” They have played an important role in climate research as they allow daily to decadal variability and changes of temperature, pressure, and precipitation, including extremes, to be addressed. Early instrume...

Globally, few precipitation records extend to the 18th century. The England Wales Precipitation (EWP) series is a notable exception with continuous monthly records from 1766. EWP has found widespread use across diverse fields of research including trend detection, evaluation of climate model simulations, as a proxy for mid‐latitude atmospheric circ...

The Global Land and Marine Observations Database aims to produce a comprehensive land based meteorological data archive and inventory. This requires the compilation of available land station meteorological data information from all known available in-situ meteorological data repositories/sources at multiple timescales (e.g. sub-daily, daily and mon...

Observational records have a key role when assessing long-term changes in our climate. However, these are these are often influenced by residual non-climatic factors which may lead to incorrect conclusions about the current state and evolution of the climate and may lead to biases if assimilated within a reanalysis system. Therefore, it is importan...

Among the objectives of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), there is the access to observational records from selected in-situ GCOS relevant networks and initiatives related to a subset of atmospheric Essential Climate Variables. At present several datasets are to be published including near surface temperature from U.S. Reference Climate...

Since the mid-twentieth century, radiosonde and satellite measurements show that the troposphere has warmed and the stratosphere has cooled. These changes are primarily due to increasing concentrations of well-mixed greenhouse gases and the depletion of stratospheric ozone. In response to continued greenhouse gas increases and stratospheric ozone d...

Global mean surface temperature is widely used in the climate literature as a measure of the impact of human activity on the climate system. While the concept of a spatial average is simple, the estimation of that average from spatially incomplete data is not. Correlation between nearby map grid cells means that missing data cannot simply be ignore...

The circulation system of the North Atlantic Ocean has weakened and is predicted to weaken further in the coming decades. An analysis suggests that this decline could lead to accelerated global surface warming. The circulation system of the North Atlantic Ocean has weakened and is predicted to weaken further in the coming decades. An analysis sugge...

Over much of the globe, the temporal extent of meteorological records is limited, yet a wealth of data remains in paper or image form in numerous archives. To date, little attention has been given to the role that students might play in efforts to rescue these data. Here we summarize an ambitious research-led, accredited teaching experiment in whic...

A common challenge in citizen science projects is gaining and retaining participants. At the same time, the tertiary education sector is constantly being challenged to provide more meaningful and practical work for students. Can participation in citizen science projects be used as coursework with real practical experiential-learning benefits, witho...

Among its objectives, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) aims to facilitate access to observations provided by Baseline and Reference in-situ networks. The aim of this (C3S 311a Lot3) contract is the redistribution of harmonized Baseline and Reference data products from atmospheric in-situ observations networks measuring: surface temperatu...

A continuous 305-year (1711–2016) monthly rainfall series (IoI_1711) is created for the Island of Ireland. The post 1850 series draws on an existing quality assured rainfall network for Ireland, while pre-1850 values come from instrumental and documentary series compiled, but not published by the UK Met Office. The series is evaluated by comparison...

There is overwhelming evidence that the climate system has warmed since the instigation of instrumental meteorological observations. The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that the evidence for warming was unequivocal. However, owing to imperfect measurements and ubiquitous changes in measurement netw...

Using state-of-the-art observational datasets and results from a large archive of computer model simulations, a consortium of scientists from 12 different institutions has resolved a long-standing conundrum in climate science—the apparent discrepancy between simulated and observed temperature trends in the tropics. Research published by this group...

Early versions of satellite and radiosonde datasets suggested that the tropical surface had warmed more than the troposphere, while climate models consistently showed tropospheric amplification of surface warming in response to human-caused increases in greenhouse gases (GHGs). We revisit such comparisons here using new observational estimates of s...

AbstractObservations are the foundation for understanding the climate system. Yet, currently available land meteorological data are highly fractured into various global, regional and national holdings for different variables and timescales, from a variety of sources, and in a mixture of formats. Added to this, many data are still inaccessible for a...

A continuous 305-year (1711–2016) monthly rainfall series is created for the Island of Ireland. Two overlapping data sources are employed: i) a previously unpublished UK Meteorological Office note containing annual rainfall anomalies and corresponding proportional monthly totals based on weather diaries and early observational records for the perio...

There are numerous networks and initiatives concerned with the non-satellite-observing segment of Earth observation. These are owned and operated by various entities and organisations often with different practices, norms, data policies, etc. The Horizon 2020 project GAIA–CLIM is working to improve our collective ability to use an appropriate subse...

Volcanic activity plays a strong role in modulating climate variability. Most model projections of the twenty-first century, however, under-sample future volcanic effects by not representing the range of plausible eruption scenarios. Here, we explore how sixty possible volcanic futures, consistent with ice-core records, impact climate variability p...

The monthly global 2° × 2° Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST) has been revised and updated from version 4 to version 5. This update incorporates a new release of ICOADS release 3.0 (R3.0), a decade of near-surface data from Argo floats, and a new estimate of centennial sea ice from HadISST2. A number of choices in aspects of qua...

In the past 3 years, global surface temperatures have spiked considerably. In early 2016 it is possible that they briefly exceeded 1·5 K above ‘pre-industrial’ levels. This spike was the result of a combination of the underlying trend and internal climate system variability. Up until about 2015, there was much discussion of a potential ‘hiatus’ fea...

We explore the extent to which internal variability can reconcile discrepancies between observed and simulated warming in the upper tropical troposphere. We compare all extant radiosonde-based estimates for the period 1958–2014 to simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 multimodel ensemble and the 100 realization Max Plan...

http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2017/EGU2017-17268.pdf

There are numerous networks and initiatives concerned with the non-satellite observing segment of Earth Observation. These are owned and operated by various entities and organisations often with different practices, norms, data policies etc. The Horizon 2020 project GAIA-CLIM is working to improve our collective ability to use an appropriate subset...

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process agreed in Paris to limit global surface temperature rise to ‘well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels’. But what period is ‘pre-industrial’? Some-what remarkably, this is not defined within the UNFCCC’s many agreements and protocols. Nor is it defined in the IPCC’s Fifth A...

The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that warming of the climate system since the start of the instrumental record was unequivocal. While this conclusion does not solely rest upon the surface temperature record, this record is a key aspect underpinning this finding. In this chapter, the basis...

Changes in diurnal temperature range (DTR) over global land areas are compared from a broad range of independent data sets. All data sets agree that global-mean DTR has decreased significantly since 1950, with most of that decrease occurring over 1960–1980. The since-1979 trends are not significant, with inter-data set disagreement even over the si...

Several recent studies have observed systematic differences between measurements in the 183.31 GHz water vapor line by space-borne sounders and calculations using radiative transfer models, with inputs from either radiosondes (radiosonde observations, RAOBs) or short-range forecasts by numerical weather prediction (NWP) models. This paper discusses...

It has been a decade since changes in diurnal temperature range (DTR) globally have been assessed in a stand-alone data analysis. The present study takes advantage of substantively improved basic data holdings arising from the International Surface Temperature Initiative's databank effort and applies the National Centers for Environmental Informati...

Several recent studies have observed biases between measurements in the 183.31GHz water vapour line by space-borne sounders and calculations using radiative transfer models with inputs from either radiosondes (RAOBS) or short range forecasts by Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models. This paper discusses all the relevant categories of observatio...

The uncertainty in Extended Reconstructed SST (ERSST) version 4 (v4) is reassessed based upon 1) reconstruction uncertainties and 2) an extended exploration of parametric uncertainties. The reconstruction uncertainty (Ur) results from using a truncated (130) set of empirical orthogonal teleconnection functions (EOTs), which yields an inevitable los...

The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, along with numerous studies since, has suggested that the apparent global warming hiatus results from some combination of natural variability and changes to external forcings. Herein the external forcings for greenhouse gases (GHGs), long-lived trace gases, volcanic and tropospheric aeros...

The NDACC Newsletter brings recent scientific results that stem from observations made in the Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change. It also gives information about recent and upcoming meetings, relevant projects, as well as station highlights. The August 2015 issue includes: Report from the Absorption Cross Sections of Ozone...

The NDACC Newsletter brings recent scientific results that stem from observations made in the Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change. It also gives information about recent and upcoming meetings, relevant projects, as well as station highlights.