Smoothing

From Glossary of Meteorology



smoothing

An averaging of data in space or time, designed to compensate for random errors or fluctuations of a scale smaller than that presumed significant to the problem at hand.

Thus, for example, a thermometer smooths the temperature reading on the scale of its time constant; the analysis of a sea level weather map smooths the pressure field on a space scale more or less systematically determined by the analyst by taking each pressure as representative not of a point but of an area about the point.
See consecutive mean, curve fitting, filtering, bloxam.


Copyright 2024 American Meteorological Society (AMS). For permission to reuse any portion of this work, please contact permissions@ametsoc.org. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 U.S. Code § 107) or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S.Copyright Act (17 USC § 108) does not require AMS’s permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a website or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, require written permission or a license from AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy statement.