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Representing twentieth century space-time climate variability, part 1: development of a 1961-90 mean monthly terrestrial climatology (1999)
| Venue: | Journal of Climate |
| Citations: | 549 - 12 self |
BibTeX
@ARTICLE{New99representingtwentieth,
author = {Mark New and Mike Hulme and Phil Jones},
title = {Representing twentieth century space-time climate variability, part 1: development of a 1961-90 mean monthly terrestrial climatology},
journal = {Journal of Climate},
year = {1999},
pages = {829--856}
}
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Abstract
The construction of a 0.58 lat 3 0.58 long surface climatology of global land areas, excluding Antarctica, is described. The climatology represents the period 1961–90 and comprises a suite of nine variables: precipitation, wet-day frequency, mean temperature, diurnal temperature range, vapor pressure, sunshine, cloud cover, ground frost frequency, and wind speed. The climate surfaces have been constructed from a new dataset of station 1961–90 climatological normals, numbering between 19 800 (precipitation) and 3615 (wind speed). The station data were interpolated as a function of latitude, longitude, and elevation using thin-plate splines. The accuracy of the interpolations are assessed using cross validation and by comparison with other climatologies. This new climatology represents an advance over earlier published global terrestrial climatologies in that it is strictly constrained to the period 1961–90, describes an extended suite of surface climate variables, explicitly incorporates elevation as a predictor variable, and contains an evaluation of regional errors associated with this and other commonly used climatologies. The climatology is already being used by researchers in the areas of ecosystem modelling, climate model evaluation, and climate change impact assessment. The data are available from the Climatic Research Unit and images of all the monthly fields can be accessed via the World Wide Web. 1.
Keyphrases
twentieth century space-time climate variability 1961-90 mean monthly terrestrial climatology diurnal temperature range surface climate variable wet-day frequency new climatology mean temperature long surface climatology climatological normal used climatology regional error cloud cover station data monthly field thin-plate spline cross validation ecosystem modelling vapor pressure global terrestrial climatology extended suite climate model evaluation world wide web new dataset ground frost frequency climatic research unit climate surface global land area change impact assessment
