The tenth IMSC, Beijing, China, 2007 - International Meetings on ...

Development and analysis of a daily high resolution grid over Spain (1950-2003)
Sixto Herrera
Spanish National Meteorological Institute (INM)
Maria R. Pons
Spanish National Meteorological Institute (INM)
Antonio S. Cofiño
University of Cantabria
Jose M. Gutierrez
University of Cantabria
Gridded climate data sets have the advantage of producing a historical set of consistent
and regularly distributed observations, and are a very useful tool for validating numerical
weather prediction models. In this work, a new 0.2º spatial resolution (~20Kms) observational
grid for precipitation and extreme temperatures (maximum and minimum) has been developed,
built-up from the Spanish National Meteorological Institute (INM) data network: 3500 rain
gauges and 850 thermometric stations. Both networks have a daily temporal coverage from
1950 to 2003.
Firstly, commonly used interpolation methods –such as kriging, kernel-based methods,
angular distance weighting and thin plate splines- have been compared, using different
aggregation time scales: daily, weekly and monthly. In this work we show how the
performance of the different methods depends on the aggregation time scale.
Secondly, in order to explore the utility of the grid, an analysis of the climatology, trends
and teleconnections with El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and North Atlantic Oscillation
(NAO) has been performed.
Projection of future heat wave mortality rates using regional climate model predictions
Chun Kit Ho
School of Engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics, University of Exeter
ckh202@exeter.ac.uk
As the frequency and intensity of heat waves are projected to increase in the 21st
century, mortality associated with extreme high temperatures is a major health impact under
climate change. This poster presents projections of future heat wave mortality in two European
cities, London, United Kingdom and Budapest, Hungary using predictions from the Hadley
Centre Regional Climate Model (RCM).
<strong>The</strong> past relationships between daily mortality rates and observed meteorological
variables in London (1993-2003) and Budapest (1992-2001) are modelled using a generalized
additive model (GAM). It is shown that the mortality rates in both cities exhibit annual cycles,
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