New Precipitation and Temperature Grids for Northern Patagonia： Advances in Relation to Global Climate Grids

• Published in: Acta meteorologica Sinica 2016-02, Vol.30 (1), p.38-52
• Main Authors: Bianchi, Emilio, Villalba, Ricardo, Viale, Maximiliano, Couvreux, Fleur, Marticorena, Rocio
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution; Atmospheric Sciences; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Geophysics and Environmental Physics; Meteorology; 全球气候; 塔; 总降水量; 数字高程模型; 月平均温度; 生态过程模型; 空间分辨率; 网格化
• ISSN: 2095-6037; 0894-0525; 2198-0934; 2191-4788
• DOI: 10.1007/s13351-015-5058-y

Climate data of mean monthly temperature and total monthly precipitation compiled from different sources in northern Patagonia were interpolated to 20-km resolution grids over the period 1997-2010. This northern Patagonian climate grid （NPCG） improves upon previous gridded products in terms of its spatial resolution and number of contributing stations, since it incorporates 218 and 114 precipitation and temper- ature records, respectively. A geostatistical method using surface elevation from a Digital Elevation Model （DEM） as the ancillary variable was used to interpolate station data into even spaced points. The maps provided by NPCG are consistent with the broad spatial and temporal patterns of the northern Patagonian climate, showing a comprehensive representation of the latitudinal and altitudinal gradients in temperature and precipitation, as well as their related patterns of seasonality and continentality. We compared the per- formance of NPCG and various other datasets available to the climate community for northern Patagonia. The grids used for the comparison included those of the Global Precipitation Climatology Project, ERA- Interim, Climate Research Unit （University of East Anglia）, and University of Delaware. Based on three statistics that quantitatively assess the spatial coherence of gridded data against available observations （bias, MAE, and RMSE）, NPCG outperforms other global grids. NPCG represents a useful tool for understand- ing climate variability in northern Patagonia and a valuable input for regional models of hydrological and ecological processes. Its resolution is optimal for validating data from the general circulation models and working with raster data derived from remote sensing, such as vegetation indices.