High resolution air temperature climatology for G reece for the period 1971–2000

Climate atlases provide an excellent overview of a region's climate in the form of maps and disclose information about climate change. They constitute a valuable tool for easy access and management of climate information for a wide range of users including scientists, policymakers, resource managers and urban planners. The main aim of this work was the production of high resolution monthly mean air temperature climatology for G reece, determined from a high resolution homogeneous mean temperature dataset. Temperature data were obtained from 52 meteorological stations of the H ellenic N ational M eteorological S ervice. High resolution temperature maps were obtained by interpolating the homogenized data. MISH ( M eteorological I nterpolation based on S urface H omogenized D ata), an interpolation method developed for meteorological purposes, was applied twice, once using as topographic model variables the elevation derived from a 90 m digital elevation model ( DEM ) and the first 15 AURELHY ( A nalyse U tilisant le R elief pour les B ésoins de l' H ydrométéorologie) principal components, and then using some additional model variables besides the elevation and the 15 AURELHY principal components: latitude, incoming solar irradiance, E uclidean distance from the coastline and land to sea percentage. The spatial interpolation of monthly mean temperature was performed with a 0.5′ resolution (∼730 m at 38 ° N ). The results showed that modelling with only the AURELHY variables is not sufficient and the use of additional model variables is necessary.