A Note on Trend Decomposition: The ‘Classical’ Approach Revisited with an Application to Surface Temperature Trends

This note reconsiders the ‘classical’approach to trend estimation and presents a modern treatment of this technique that enables trend filters which incorporate end-effects to be constructed easily and efficiently. The approach is illustrated by estimating recent Northern Hemispheric temperature trends. In so doing, it shows how classical trend models may be selected in empirical applications and indicates how this choice determines the properties of the latest trend estimates.