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Tomé & Miranda 2004
Tomé, A.R. and Miranda, P.M.A. (2004). Piecewise linear fitting and trend changing points of climate parameters. Geophysical Research Letters 31: doi: 10.1029/2003GL019100. issn: 0094-8276.

Finding an overall linear trend is a common method in scientific studies. It is almost a requirement when one intends to study variability. Nevertheless, when dealing with long climate temporal series, fitting a straight line only seldom has a relevant meaning. This paper proposes and describes a new methodology for finding overall trends, and, simultaneously, for computing a new set of climate parameters: the breakpoints between periods with significantly different trends. The proposed methodology uses a least-squares approach to compute the best continuous set of straight lines that fit a given time series, subject to a number of constraints on the minimum distance between breakpoints and on the minimum trend change at each breakpoint. The method is tested with three climate time series.

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Abstract

Keywords
Global Change, Atmosphere, Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics, Climatology, Mathematical Geophysics, General or miscellaneous
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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