So what changed between beta1 and beta2?

Even though we documented changes from the beta1 release to beta2, did we actually change the overall results of the databank? Well, there was a noticeable drop of stations over time, especially over the past 50 years:

 

However this does not mean that we are losing important stations. It was discovered through Nick Stokes’ blog that there may have been duplicates within the beta1 release. After some analysis, we tweaked the algorithm to remove these duplicates. Because of this we have lost the station count, however we are still seeing many more stations than the current operational product of GHCN-M version 3. In the end however, addressing these changes from beta1 to beta2 did not make a major difference on the annual global anomalies.

 

We are still in beta, however we are pushing forward for a version 1.0.0 release soon!