The effects of missing data on global ozone estimates

Abstract

The effects of missing data and model truncation on estimates of the global mean, zonal distribution, and global distribution of ozone are considered. It is shown that missing data can introduce biased estimates with errors that are not accounted for in the accuracy calculations of empirical modeling techniques. Data-fill techniques are introduced and used for evaluating error bounds and constraining the estimate in areas of sparse and missing data. It is found that the accuracy of the global mean estimate is more dependent on data distribution than model size. Zonal features can be accurately described by 7th order models over regions of adequate data distribution. Data variance accounted for by higher order models appears to represent climatological features of columnar ozone rather than pure error. Data-fill techniques can prevent artificial feature generation in regions of sparse or missing data without degrading high order estimates over dense data regions.