How to make several DateListPlot have the same scale?

Question

I want to plot some weather data series. Unfortunately the series were collected in different episodes, from which some overlap. I would like to plot them as different plots in a column, but with exactly the same time scale. However datespec option doesn't work for this purpose. I know I can always add a single point at the beginning and at the end of series, however I would like to ask if there is some more elegant solution.

For example:

start = {2003, 8, 6, 0, 1, 29};
end = {2004, 1, 24, 23, 46, 58};
GraphicsColumn[{DateListPlot[SomeTimeData1, {start, end}], 
  DateListPlot[SomeTimeData2, {start, end}]}]

gives:

Answer 1

One way would be to specify an explicit x-axis range on the plots, using AbsoluteTime to convert the desired date range into the coordinate values required by PlotRange:

$data1 = FinancialData["AAPL", {{2003, 9}, {2003, 11}}];
$data2 = FinancialData["MSFT", {{2003, 10}, {2004, 1}}];

$start = {2003, 8, 6, 0, 1, 29};
$end = {2004, 1, 24, 23, 46, 58};

$rangeOption = PlotRange -> {AbsoluteTime /@ {$start, $end}, Automatic};

GraphicsColumn[
  { DateListPlot[$data1, $rangeOption]
  , DateListPlot[$data2, $rangeOption]
  }
]