The question or problem I chose to answer was how to determine the temperature and precipitation for two seasons of the year at a location that is not reasonably close to a National Weather Service Weather Station.
Sample and definition of interpolation
Wet Season is October – March and the dry season is April - September
This slide shows all of the area weather stations in California that I considered for this study. The stations are identified by their three letter National Weather Service location code. I narrowed it down to these stations at first because they are “reasonably” close for the area. As you can see, around Old Dale there are not many weather reporting stations.
This slide shows all of the National Weather Service stations located within 150 kilometers of Old Dale. I had to use such a broad range because of the lack of close (other than NXP, Twentynine Palms) official weather stations. I widened my range until I felt I had enough data points to try to make some reasonable analyses.
I chose IDW for my interpolation method because it considers both the sample point’s distance and value from the estimated cells. Points closer to the cell have a greater influence on the cell’s estimated value than those that are farther away.
Average dry season precipitation at Old Dale using IDW. Precipitation for the dry season (April – September) is in the range of 0.2-0.4 centimeters (.07 - .15 inches). As you can see from the analysis the precipitation closely follows that of the NXP weather station (29 Palms). This data was in the appropriate range for a location in the Mojave Desert region.
Analysis of IDW Average Dry Season Temperatures. Again the value closely follows that of the nearest reporting station of 29 Palms. Both locations received an average temperature of 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit). For the dry season this would be an appropriate value for the desert.
Analysis of the average IDW Wet Season Temperature. Values closely follow station NXP (29 Palms). For the months of October – March the average wet season precipitation was in the range of 0.2-1.2 centimeters (.07 - .47 inches). Being a desert areas even in the “wet” seasons the average rain received is not that high an amount.
Analysis of IDW Average Wet Season Temperatures. The average temperature again closely followed Twentynine Palms at 12.8-13.8 degrees Celsius (around 55.4 degrees Fahrenheit).
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