Some of these comments were addressed to the way the stations were selected and to add more stringent tests during this part of our code. We adjusted our code in light of these comments, but as we were then about to perform our standard update on HadISD version 1 (to 1.0.4.2015p), we waited until we were able to include data from 2015 into an updated version 2 as well before re-running our station selection code.
Another of the comments was that the paper would be best suited to a different journal, and a sister journal of Climate of the Past - Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems (GI) - was suggested.
We re-ran the updated station selection code, all the quality control procedures, homogeneity assessment and comparison to HadISD.1.0.4.2015p to create HadISD.2.0.0.2015p. We submitted our updated manuscript to GI on 17th March 2016.
After a long time in discussions with the editorial team to explain why the manuscript was very similar to our Climate of the Past Discussion paper, the paper was published in GID on 12th September 2016. The editorial team have decided that as this manuscript has already gone through one round of open peer review in an EGU journal, the discussion phase could be closed before the usual period had completed, on 13th September. We are now in the process of submitting our final files to GI.
We have released HadISD.2.0.0.2015p on the HadOBS server at www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisd. We expected further comments from review process at GI, and had intended to update the dataset in light of these, creating v2.0.0.2015f. However this will now not happen, and the first release of HadISD2 will remain at v2.0.0.2015p. We intend to perform annual updates on HadISD2 on similar timescales as for HadISD, and so expect the next update to be in January 2017 to create v2.0.1.2016p.
Please read the papers on HadISD version 2 before using this dataset and also get in touch if you have any concerns with the data so we can check and address them if necessary.
The major changes when going to version 2 from version 1 is the increase in the timespan covered by the dataset, back to 1931. We have also refreshed the station selection criteria, and there are 7677 unique station IDs present in this version; but this will change on each new release. A number of the QC tests have had minor tweaks, and we have also improved the level of QC applied to wind speed and direction observations.
