Estimation of daily mean temperatures: an accurate method for the Douro Valley

Abstract

Air temperature data from many locations worldwide are only available as series of daily minima and maxima temperatures. Historically, several different approaches have been used to estimate the actual daily mean temperature, as only in the last two or three decades automatic thermometers are able to compute its actual value. The most common approach is to estimate it by averaging the daily minima and maxima. When only daily minima and maxima are available, an alternative approach, proposed by Dall’Amico and Hornsteiner in 2006, uses the two daily extremes together with next day minima temperature and a coefficient related to the local daily astronomical sunset time. Additionally, the method uses two optimizable coefficients related to the region’s temperature profile. In order to use this approach it is necessary to optimize the region’s unknown parameters. For this optimization, it is necessary a dataset containing the maxima, minima, and the actual daily mean temperatures for at least one year. In this research, for the period 2007-2014, we used three datasets of minima, maxima and actual mean temperatures obtained at three automatic meteorological stations located in the Douro Valley to optimize the two unknown parameters in the Dall’Amico and Hornsteiner approach. Moreover, we compared the actual mean daily temperatures available from the three datasets with the correspondent values estimated by using i) the usual approach of averaging the daily maxima and minima temperatures and ii) the Dall’Amico and Hornsteiner approach. Results show that the former approach overestimates, on average, the daily mean temperatures by 0.5ºC. The Dall’Amico and Hornsteiner approach showed to be a better approximation of mean temperatures for the three meteorological stations used in this research, being unbiased relative to the actual mean values of daily temperatures. In conclusion, this research confirms that the Dall’Amico and Hornsteiner is a better approach to estimate the mean daily temperatures and provides the optimized parameters for three sites located at each of the three sub-regions of the Douro Valley (Baixo Corgo, Cima Corgo and Douro Superior).

Comparison of Touriga Nacional With Three Portuguese Minor Grapevine Varieties on Canopy, Production and Quality in the Douro Region

“…According to Figure 1, the mean temperatures were higher in summer (July, August and September) during the studied period than the climatological normal "1971-2000", except for July 2018. When comparing with the mean temperatures between 2007 and 2014 in Pinhão referred by Real et al (2018), there was an increase for 2016, 2017 and 2018. These warmer conditions can have influenced the occurrence of veraison and maturation with a tendency to accelerate the growing cycle in the studied years.…”