A mapping tool for climatological applications

Abstract

Modern GIS tools are inclined to be complex and not well suited to climatological applications. To redress this situation, a free tool for the creation of maps at different spatial resolutions for biometeorological and climatological purposes has been developed for use by GIS users and non-specialists alike. The method produces grids and isolines on maps at the same time using a climate mapping tool (CMT), which employs two different algorithms for deriving isolines from gridded data. CMT allows the creation and mapping based on ASCII and CSV files as well as the import of the most common GIS data file formats. The algorithms and the mapping tool developed can be used for a variety of applications, such as mapping of bioclimate indices. A case study using physiologically equivalent temperature (PET) is presented to demonstrate the features of CMT. © 2010 Royal Meteorological Society.