Estimates of past and future ozone trends from multimodel simulations using a flexible smoothing spline methodology

The approach is motivated by, and particularly suited to, the analysis of multimodel time series of varying length. This Time series Additive Model (TSAM) approach consists of three distinct steps: estimation of individual model trends, baseline adjustment of the trends, and the weighted combination of the individual model trends to produce a multimodel trend (MMT) estimate.

The baseline adjustment step is not an essential ingredient of the TSAM but is included to reduce model spread. The association of the TSAM approach with a probabilistic model allows trend estimates to be used to make formal inference (e.g., calculation of confidence and prediction intervals). The method is applied to the analysis of multimodel ozone time series of varying lengths as were considered for the 2006 Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion.