The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Small-Scale Climate Maps: A Sensitivity Analysis of Some Common Assumptions Associated with Grid-Point Interpolation and Contouring
Abstract
From Shepard's (1968) local-search method, algorithms are developed for contouring on spherical surfaces and in Cartesian two-space. These algorithms are used to investigate errors on small-scale climate maps caused by the common practice of interpolating—from irregularly-spaced data points to regular-lattice nodes—and contouring in Cartesian two-space. Using mean annual air temperatures drawn from 100 irregularly-spaced weather stations, the annual air-temperature field over the western half of the northern hemisphere is estimated both on the sphere (assumed to be correct) and in Cartesian two-space. When these fields are mapped and compared, error magnitudes as large as 5° to 10° C appear in the air-temperature field approximated in Cartesian two-space.
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Citations
Cited by
Schneider, U., Becker, A., Finger, P., Meyer-Christoffer, A., Ziese, M., & Rudolf, B. (2014) · Theoretical and Applied Climatology · doi:10.1007/s00704-013-0860-x · Cited by 1,385
Guidelines for assessing the suitability of spatial climate data sets
Daly, C. (2006) · International Journal of Climatology · doi:10.1002/joc.1322 · Cited by 601
Simolo, C., Brunetti, M., Maugeri, M., & Nanni, T. (2010) · International Journal of Climatology · doi:10.1002/joc.1992 · Cited by 111
Forest loss and Borneo’s climate
McAlpine, C. A., Johnson, A., Salazar, A., Syktus, J., Wilson, K., Meijaard, E., Seabrook, L., Dargusch, P., Nordin, H., & Sheil, D. (2018) · Environmental Research Letters · doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aaa4ff · Cited by 104
The GPCC Drought Index – a new, combined and gridded global drought index
Ziese, M., Schneider, U., Meyer-Christoffer, A., Schamm, K., Vido, J., Finger, P., Bissolli, P., Pietzsch, S., & Becker, A. (2014) · Earth System Science Data · doi:10.5194/essd-6-285-2014 · Cited by 66
“It is based on monthly totals calculated from SYNOP reports, interpolated to a regular grid with 1◦ spatial resolution using a modified SPHEREMAP scheme (Willmott et al., 1985) and a background climatology.”
Method
Metadata
- Authors
- Willmott, C. J., Rowe, C. M., & Philpot, W. D.
- Venue
- The American Cartographer
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 1985-01
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 5-16
- ISSN
- 0094-1689 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2019819708
- Cited by
- 380
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 4.37
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Small-Scale Climate Maps: A Sensitivity Analysis of Some Common Assumptions Associated with Grid-Point Interpolation and Contouring. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1559/152304085783914686
- The paper
- Willmott, C. J., Rowe, C. M., & Philpot, W. D. (1985). Small-Scale Climate Maps: A Sensitivity Analysis of Some Common Assumptions Associated with Grid-Point Interpolation and Contouring. The American Cartographer. https://doi.org/10.1559/152304085783914686
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
