Worldclim

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title: "Visualize World Climate Data"

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Altitude (elevation above sea level) (m) (from SRTM)

World monthly minimum temperature

World monthly maximum temperature

World monthly mean temperature

World monthly precipitation

Introduction

WorldClim is a set of global climate layers (climate grids) with a spatial resolution of about 1 square kilometer. The data can be used for mapping and spatial modeling in a GIS or with other computer programs.

Here, we want to visualize the WorldClim data to give research a direct reference.

Information about the methods used to generate the climate layers, and the units and formats of the data. You can find more info in the preferred citation:

Hijmans, R.J., S.E. Cameron, J.L. Parra, P.G. Jones and A. Jarvis, 2005. Very high resolution interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas. International Journal of Climatology 25: 1965-1978.

Data prepare

Data download

Data for current conditions (~1950-2000) was downloaded from http://worldclim.org/current. WorldClim has four types of spatial resoluation data for download. Here, we visualized the 2.5 arc-minutes resolution.

Four spatial resulations:

• 30 arc-seconds (~1 km)
• 2.5 arc-minutes
• 5 arc-minutes
• 10 arc-minutes

Available variables:

• Min. Temperature: average monthly minimum temperature (°C * 10)
• Max. Temperature: average monthly maximum temperature (°C * 10)
• Mean Temperature: average monthly mean temperature (°C * 10)
• Precipitation: average monthly precipitation (mm)
• Bioclim: bioclimatic variables derived from the tmean, tmin, tmax and prec
  • BIO1 = Annual Mean Temperature
  • BIO2 = Mean Diurnal Range (Mean of monthly (max temp - min temp))
  • BIO3 = Isothermality (BIO2/BIO7) (* 100)
  • BIO4 = Temperature Seasonality (standard deviation *100)
  • BIO5 = Max Temperature of Warmest Month
  • BIO6 = Min Temperature of Coldest Month
  • BIO7 = Temperature Annual Range (BIO5-BIO6)
  • BIO8 = Mean Temperature of Wettest Quarter
  • BIO9 = Mean Temperature of Driest Quarter
  • BIO10 = Mean Temperature of Warmest Quarter
  • BIO11 = Mean Temperature of Coldest Quarter
  • BIO12 = Annual Precipitation
  • BIO13 = Precipitation of Wettest Month
  • BIO14 = Precipitation of Driest Month
  • BIO15 = Precipitation Seasonality (Coefficient of Variation)
  • BIO16 = Precipitation of Wettest Quarter
  • BIO17 = Precipitation of Driest Quarter
  • BIO18 = Precipitation of Warmest Quarter
  • BIO19 = Precipitation of Coldest Quarter
• Altitude: altitude (elevation above sea level) (m) (from SRTM)

Esri Grids to GeoTiff

We convert the orginal ESRI grids format to GeoTiff format with gdal_translate tools.

Visualiztion

We visualize these data with the help of R package named rasterVis.

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