Extreme Temperature Analysis

The Maproom facilitates the exploration of the history of extreme monthly and seasonal minimum and maximum temperatures.

The user can define the Season over which to map the probability of minimum or maximum temperature no-to-/exceed a user-defined threshold. The map therefore illustrates how likely or unlikely the threshold is to be crossed. Clicking on the map will then produce the probability of exceeding graph represented by a normal distribution. The graph gives a sense of the range of possible value for monthly or seasonal minimum or maximum temperatures, including its extreme values. The different options are detailed below.

Season: Specify the start and end dates of the season, over which the rainfall characteristcs are to be computed over the 1991-2020 climatological period.

Temperature: Choose between minimum or maximum temperature.

Hot/Cold Day Definition: Threshold in ˚C above/below which a day is considered hot/cold.

Seasonal daily statistics: Choose the seasonal diagnostic quantity (i.e the statistic of the daily data) to be computed for each season, from the following choices.
Seasonal Average: average daily temperature over the season.
Number of Hot/Cold Days: the number of hot/cold days (as defined above) during the season.

Yearly seasonal statistics: choose the threshold to map the probability of non-/exceeding, or look at the variance or the coefficient of variation of the yearly seasonal time series across the 1991-2020 period.
Probability of non-/exceeding: the portion of years, in percentage, when the seasonal quantity exceeded or not a given threshold.
Variance: a measure of the variability of the seasonal quantity, expressed in square of the units. The higher, the farther the quantity departs from its mean value.
Coefficient of Variation: the ratio between the standard deviation (square root of the variance) and the mean of the seasonal quantity. It gives similar information as the variance but in perspective with the value of the mean rather than in units of the quantity.

Spatial Resolution: The analysis can be done and mapped at each 0.0375 resolution grid point. Additionally it is possible to average the daily min/max temperature, prior to doing the analysis, over the 0.0375 grid points falling within administrative boundaries for the probability of exceeding graph.

Dataset Documentation

Reconstructed temperature data on a 0.0375 x 0.0375 lat/lon grid (about 4km) from National Meteorology Agency. Monthly Minimum and maximum temperature time series (1991 to 2020) were generated by combining quality-controlled station observations with downscaled reanalysis product.

How to use this interactive map

Helpdesk

Contactdccmsmaproom.malawi@gmail.com with any technical questions or problems with this Map Room.