Change point detection by state space modeling of long-term air temperature series in Europe

Abstract

This work presents the statistical analysis of a monthly average temperatures time series in several European cities using a state space approach, which considers models with a deterministic seasonal component and a stochastic trend. Temperature rise rates in Europe seem to have increased in the last decades when compared with longer periods. Therefore, change point detection methods, both parametric and non-parametric methods, were applied to the standardized residuals of the state space models (or some other related component) in order to identify these possible changes in the monthly temperature rise rates. All of the used methods have identified at least one change point in each of the temperature time series, particularly in the late 1980s or early 1990s. The differences in the average temperature trend are more evident in Eastern European cities than in Western Europe. The smoother-based t-test framework proposed in this work showed an advantage over the other methods, precisely because it considers the time correlation presented in time series. Moreover, this framework focuses the change point detection on the stochastic trend component.