Multi-point measurement stations and adjustment methods for mapping air temperatures of Wuhan City, China

Abstract

The micro-climate condition is important topic in urban environment research. Field measurements can provide the characteristics and distributions of the climatic parameters, such as air temperature accurately in built environments. How to deal with the limitation of measurement on the large area and compare the data of a large number of measuring points simultaneously needs further research. In this study, The Triangle Method and Thiessen Polygon Method were proposed to get the adjustment coefficients of mobile stations and thus the air temperature values of all measuring stations were adjusted to a certain time for obtaining the distribution maps of Wuhan City in summer and winter. The data of 17 fixed meteorological stations were compared with those of 101 mobile stations established in different time periods. The two methods’ accuracy, applicability and data comparison was researched. From the derived distribution maps of air temperature, urban areas showed different climate conditions that the maximum temperature difference in the summer was above 11 °C, whereas, in the winter, it was 2–3 °C. The mean correlation values in the adjustments were 0.793 and 0.764 for the Triangle Method and Thiessen Polygon Method respectively, indicating that both methods were feasible for the adjustment of the measured data and could effectively solve the problem of the time inconsistencies of each station. The Triangle Method carried on the mean value processing, which is better at avoiding the errors and the Thiessen Polygon Method has the advantages of a simple algorithm and high boundary adaptability.