Climate Interpolation Download latest Version of New_LocClim here

When I started working for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN as a visiting scientist, the head of the Agromet Group (Dr. René Gommes) told me that they want me to tell them how they can add value to their database which is published as FAOCLIM (153MB). With respect to monthly meteorological data the database is rather extensive. Dr. Christoph Beck, a colleague and friend of mine, prepared two nice loops to show how the number and spatial distribution of data changed with time. One of these loops shows precipitation stations, the other temperature stations. In 2001 I got deeper into details of the content of the database. The resulting report is in German only. Later, in 2004, I compared the actual stage of the database with the one I knew from before. The respective report was in English this time.

Myself, I thought that it may be of interest to program a climate interpolator which easily prompts the average climate conditions for any location provided by the user. At the end of my short term as visiting scientist in Rome LocClim 1 (12Mb) the local climate estimator of FAO was born.

Since I got the offer to work with the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) as a research scientist, in Offenbach (Germany) close to my hometown Frankfurt, I went back to Germany and had nearly no time to further develop LocClim. However, since René pushed me once in a while, I finally programmed a new version of LocClim: New_LocClim (16Mb).

For those who have no idea about interpolation but get lost with all these methods (like me in the very first days) I programmed a little toy. The interpolation toy interpolates some very generic one-dimensional situations with different methods and lists the errors. Thus it allows getting an idea of how different methods behave in different situations.

An overview over LocClim can be obtained from the transparencies of the presentation I gave at FAO headquarters in spring 2001.

A short introduction into spatial interpolation of climatic data can be obtained from chapter 5.1 of the CMBox manual.

An example application of New_LocClim can be found here.

Here is a web version of LocClim, which only provides rough information.

For further information read FAO agroclimatic databases and mapping tools or drop me a line at j.grieser@gmx.de.