Skip to main content

Gridded Croatian climatology for 1961–1990

Theoretical and Applied Climatology volume 102, pages 87–103 (2010)Cite this article

Abstract

In climatology, one of the most important pieces of information about the climate of a place or a region is information about the Climatological Normals (CLINO)—the average values of meteorological elements for a 30-year period. This kind of information usually comes in tables and is available for different observation sites from national meteorological services or from World Meteorological Organisation publications. The key issue, then, becomes how to interpolate these values over the entire area of interest to get reliable and accurate estimates (maps) of climatic elements. Here, the regression kriging framework has been applied for mapping of 20 climatological parameters for the 1961–1990 period for the 56,594 km2 of Croatian territory, with a resolution of 1 km. In total, 152 main and climatological and 567 precipitation-measuring stations have been used in the analysis. Extensive pre-processing of metadata on station co-ordinates has been done, as well as completion of missing monthly averages. The final results are 20 climatological maps available in high resolution together with error maps and accuracy assessment measures.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Price includes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10

Notes

  1. SRTM_DEM_RH_100m.zip obtained from http://spatial-analyst.net

  2. Data downloaded from: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v2/zipd/v2.mean.zip

  3. For list of stations see: http://cdo.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo/3500stn.txt

  4. Data downloaded from: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v2/zipd/v2.prcp.zip

References

  • Abatzoglou JT, Redmond KT, Edwards LM (2009) Classification of regional climate variability in the state of California. J Appl Meteorol Climatol 48:1527–1541

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bognar A (1996) Croatia−the land and natural features. GeoJournal 38:407–416

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Böhner J, Antonić O (2008) Land-surface parameters specific to topo-climatology. In: Hengl T, Reuter HI (eds) Geomorphometry: concepts software applications. Developments in soil science vol. 33. Elsevier, Amsterdam

    Google Scholar 

  • Burrough PA, McDonnell RA (2004) Principles of Geographical Information Systems. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Cegnar T (ed) (1996) Climate of Slovenia. Hydrometeorological Institute of Slovenia, Ljubljana

    Google Scholar 

  • Cressie N (1993) Statistics for Spatial Data. Revised Ed. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Daly C, Gibson WP, Taylor GH, Johnson GL, Pasteris P (2002) A knowledge-based approach to the statistical mapping of climate. Clim Res 22:99–113

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Draper NR, Smith H (1998) Applied regression analysis, 3rd edn. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • DZS (2007) Statistički ljetopis/Statistical Yearbook: Geografski i meteorološki podaci/Geographical and meteorological data. Državni zavod za statistiku/Central Bureau of Statistics, Zagreb

    Google Scholar 

  • FAO (2001) FAOCLIM 2.0 A World-Wide Agroclimatic Database. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome

    Google Scholar 

  • Gajić-Čapka M, Perčec Tadić M, Patarčić M (2003) Digitalna godišnja oborinska karta Hrvatske (A digital annual precipitation map of Croatia). Hrv. meteor. časopis 38:21–34 in Croatian with eng. summary

    Google Scholar 

  • GLC2000 Global Land Cover 2000 database (2003) European Commission Joint Research Centre http://bioval.jrc.ec.europa.eu/products/glc2000/products.php

  • Hengl T (2006) Finding the right pixel size. Comput Geosci 32(9):1283–1298

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hengl T (2007) A Practical Guide to Geostatistical Mapping of Environmental Variables. EUR 22904 EN Scientific and Technical Research series Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxemburg

  • Hengl T, Heuvelink G, Stein A (2004) A generic framework for spatial prediction of soil variables based on regression-kriging. Geoderma 120:75–93

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hiebl J, Auer I, Böhm R, Schöner W, Maugeri M, Lentini G, Spinoni J, Brunetti M, Nanni T, Perčec Tadić M, Bihari Z, Dolinar M, Müller-Westermeier G (2009) A high-resolution 1961–1990 monthly temperature climatology for the greater Alpine region. Met Zeith 18(5):507–530

    Google Scholar 

  • Hijmans RJ, Cameron SE, Parra JL, Jones PG, Jarvis A (2005) Very high resolution interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas. Int J Climatol 25:1965–1978

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ILWIS 3.0 User’s Guide. http://52north.org/images/stories/52n/admin/ilwis_documentation/chap09.pdf

  • Jimenez PA, Gonzalez-Rouco JF, Montavez JP, Garcia-Bustamante E, Navarro J (2009) Climatology of wind patterns in the northeast of the Iberian peninsula. Int J Climatol 29:501–525

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lloyd CD (2005) Assessing the effect of integrating elevation data into the estimation of monthly precipitation in Great Britain. J Hydrol 308(1–4):128–150

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mersich I et al. (ed) (2000) Climate Atlas of Hungary. Hungarian Meteorological Sevice, Budapest

  • Neal RA, Phillips ID (2009) Summer daily precipitation variability over the East Anglian region of Great Britain. Int J Climatol 29:1661–1679

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Neter J, Wasserman W, Kutner MH (1983) Applied linear regression models. Richard D. Irwin, Burr Ridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Pebesma EJ (1997) Gstat user’s manual. Program manual (http://www.geog.uu.nl/gstat/manual/gstat.html)

  • Pebesma EJ (2006) The role of external variables and GIS databases in geostatistical analysis. T GIS 10(4):615–632

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pebesma EJ, Wesseling CG (1998) Gstat: a program for geostatistical modelling prediction and simulation. Comput Geosci 24(1):17–31

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Penzar B, Penzar I, Orlić M (2001) Vrijeme i klima hrvatskog Jadrana (Weather and climate of the Croatian part of the Adriatic). Nakladna kuća dr. Feletar, Zagreb in Croatian

    Google Scholar 

  • Perčec Tadić M (2004) Digitalna karta srednje godišnje sume globalnog Sunčeva zračenja i model proračuna globalnog Sunčeva zračenja na nagnute različito orijentirane plohe (Digital Map of the Mean Annual Global Solar Radiation Sum and Calculation Model for Global Solar Radiation on Inclined Variously Oriented Surfaces). Hrv. meteor. časopis 39:41–50 in Croatian with eng. summary

    Google Scholar 

  • Perry M, Hollis D (2005) The generation of monthly gridded datasets for a range of climatic variables over the UK. Int J Climatol 25(8):1041–1054

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peterson TC, Vose RS (1997) An overview of the global historical climatology network temperature database. B Am Meteorol Soc 78:2837–2849

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pleško N, Gajić-Čapka M, Zaninović K (1984) Meteorološke oborinske podloge za projekt “Katastar malih vodnih snaga u SR Hrvatskoj” (Meteorological analysis of precipitation for the study “Water resource menagement in Croatia”). Državni hidrometeorološki zavod, Zagreb (in Croatian–unpublished)

  • Poje D, Žibrat Z, Gajić-Čapka M (1984) Osnovne karakteristike naoblake i insolacije na području SR Hrvatske (Main features of cloudiness and insolation in the area of Croatia). Rasprave 19:49–74 in Croatian with eng. summary

    Google Scholar 

  • Thornton PE, Running SW, White MA (1997) Generating surfaces of daily meteorological variables over large regions of complex terrain. J Hydrol 190:214–251

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wackernagel H (2003) Multivariate geostatistics: an introduction with applications, 2nd edn. Springer, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Webster R, Oliver MA (2007) Geostatistics for environmental scientists. Wiley, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • WMO (1996) Climatological normals (CLINO) for the period 1961–1990. World Meteorological Organization Document WMO/OMMNo. 847, Geneva also in WMO Global Standard Normals (DSI−9641A). Digital data set available from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) at http://ols.nndc.noaa.gov/plolstore/plsql/olstore.prodspecific?prodnum=C00058-CDR-A0001

  • Zaninović K, Gajić-Čapka M, Pleško N (1985) Prostorna raspodjela srednje godišnje temperature zraka na području SR Hrvatske (Spatial distribution of mean annual temperature over the area of Croatia) Državni hidrometeorološki zavod, Zagreb (in Croatian–unpublished)

  • Zaninović K, Gajić-Čapka M, Perčec Tadić M et al (2008) Klimatski atlas Hrvatske/Climate atlas of Croatia 1961–1990, 1971–2000. Državni hidrometeorološki zavod, Zagreb

    Google Scholar 

  • Žibrat Z, Gajić-Čapka M (1986) Globalno zračenje na području SR Hrvatske (Global radiation in the area of Croatia). Rasprave 21:47–58 in Croatian with eng. summary

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgement

The author is grateful to the organisers of the GEOSTAT summer school (Tomislav Hengl, Roger Bivand, Edzer J. Pebesma, Olaf Conrad and Victor Olaya Ferrero) for their inspiring course and comments and suggestions on the subject of geostatistics, R and Google Earth... The author is also very grateful to the anonymous revisers for constructive comments that helped improve this manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department for Climatological Research and Applied Climatology, Meteorological and Hydrological Service of Croatia, Grič 3, 10000, Zagreb, Croatia

    Melita Perčec Tadić

Authors
  1. Melita Perčec Tadić
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Melita Perčec Tadić.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Perčec Tadić, M. Gridded Croatian climatology for 1961–1990. Theor Appl Climatol 102, 87–103 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-009-0237-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-009-0237-3

Keywords

  • Kriging
  • Digital Elevation Model
  • Weighted Distance
  • Sunshine Duration
  • Precipitation Station