Removing the relocation bias from the 155-year Haparanda temperature record in Northern Europe

2017

The village Haparanda in northern Sweden hosts one of the longest meteorological station records in Europe depicting climate conditions in the subarctic. Since the station was relocated several times, moving gradually from urbanized to more rural areas, the record is likely biased by anthropogenic influences. We here assess these influences and demonstrate that even in villages urban heat island biases might affect the temperature readings. We detail a method to quantify this bias and remove it from the long Haparanda station record running since 1859. The correction is based on parallel temperature measurements at previous station locations in Haparanda. These measurements revealed a disti…