Geostatistical Approach for Spatial Interpolation of Meteorological Data

Abstract

Meteorological data are used in many studies, especially in planning, disaster management, water resources management, hydrology, agriculture and environment. Analyzing changes in meteorological variables is very important to understand a climate system and minimize the adverse effects of the climate changes. One of the main issues in meteorological analysis is the interpolation of spatial data. In recent years, with the developments in Geographical Information System (GIS) technology, the statistical methods have been integrated with GIS and geostatistical methods have constituted a strong alternative to deterministic methods in the interpolation and analysis of the spatial data. In this study; spatial distribution of precipitation and temperature of the Aegean Region in Turkey for years 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010 were obtained by the Ordinary Kriging method which is one of the geostatistical interpolation methods, the changes realized in 5-year periods were determined and the results were statistically examined using cell and multivariate statistics. The results of this study show that it is necessary to pay attention to climate change in the precipitation regime of the Aegean Region. This study also demonstrates the usefulness of the geostatistical approach in meteorological studies.