On the precipitation climatology of Turkey by harmonic analysis

Basic climatological features over any region are hidden in many meteorolog ical variables, especially in precipitation and temperature records. Among these features the single most important one is the periodicity of differen t harmonics. Identification of periodic features require regionally and tem porally representative data sets and treatment methodology for depicting th eir amplitudes, frequencies, phase angles and basic statistical parameters. In this paper, only precipitation records are considered for depicting spa tial periodic features over the whole of Turkey. Herein, more than 200 prec ipitation records, uniformly scattered all over Turkey, are studied with ba sic harmonic analysis revealing the various climatological patterns of Turk ey in the form of contour maps. It is observed that only the first and the second harmonics are sufficient to explain more than 90% of the climatologi cal variations in Turkey. Copyright (C) 1999 Royal Meteorological Society.