Forest climatology: reconstruction of mean climatological data for Bavaria, Germany

A method is presented that allows the reconstruction of forest climatologic al data using data available from routine weather stations. Data from 32 ro utine weather stations were used to estimate the monthly mean values of dai ly mean air temperature, daily maximum temperature, daily minimum temperatu re, water vapour pressure, wind speed and precipitation at eight forest cli mate stations in Bavaria. The data obtained at these stations were used to establish empirical transfer functions to transform data interpolated from the weather stations to values that are valid for the different meteorologi cal conditions in the forests. These empirical transfer functions between o bserved and interpolated climatological data are derived using a universal regression technique. The results show that using empirical transfer functi ons reduced the mean absolute errors between observed and estimated monthly mean climatological data significantly as compared to simple interpolation . A 31 year (1965-1995) monthly mean forest climatological data set in Bava ria, reconstructed using Barnes interpolation and the empirical transfer fu nctions, was used to compare the forest microclimate with the surrounding m esoclimate. In addition, the climates of three typical forest regions were compared. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.