Spatio-temporal interpolation of daily temperatures for global land areas at 1 km resolution

M. Kilibarda, T. Hengl, G.B.M. Heuvelink, B. Graler, E. Pebesma, M.P. Tadic, B. Bajat

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

196 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Combined Global Surface Summary of Day and European Climate Assessment and Dataset daily meteorological data sets (around 9000 stations) were used to build spatio-temporal geostatistical models and predict daily air temperature at ground resolution of 1km for the global land mass. Predictions in space and time were made for the mean, maximum, and minimum temperatures using spatio-temporal regression-kriging with a time series of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 8 day images, topographic layers (digital elevation model and topographic wetness index), and a geometric temperature trend as covariates. The accuracy of predicting daily temperatures was assessed using leave-one-out cross validation. To account for geographical point clustering of station data and get a more representative cross-validation accuracy, predicted values were aggregated to blocks of land of size 500x500km. Results show that the average accuracy for predicting mean, maximum, and minimum daily temperatures is root-mean-square error (RMSE) =2 degrees C for areas densely covered with stations and between 2 degrees C and 4 degrees C for areas with lower station density. The lowest prediction accuracy was observed at high altitudes (>1000m) and in Antarctica with an RMSE around 6 degrees C. The model and predictions were built for the year 2011 only, but the same methodology could be extended for the whole range of the MODIS land surface temperature images (2001 to today), i.e., to produce global archives of daily temperatures (a next-generation repository) and to feed various global environmental models. Key Points Global spatio-temporal regression-kriging daily temperature interpolation Fitting of global spatio-temporal models for the mean, maximum, and minimum temperatures Time series of MODIS 8 day images as explanatory variables in regression part
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2294-2313
JournalJournal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
Volume119
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2014

Keywords

  • daily climate extremes
  • space-time climate
  • data set
  • spatial interpolation
  • surface temperature
  • daily precipitation
  • air-temperature
  • part ii
  • variability
  • geostatistics

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