Home > Thematic description of CGMS level 1 > Goals and assumptions

• Introduction
• Thematic description of CGMS level 1
• Goals and assumptions
• Acquisition, checks and processing daily station data
• Spatial Interpolation to regular climatic grid
• Alternative entry for grid weather data
• Thematic description of CGMS level 2
• Additional functionality in the CGMS software for yield forecast
• Overview of different CGMS versions
• CGMS 9.2 database
• CGMS User Interface
• References
• Annex A Using CGMS in batch mode
• Contacts
• Legal Notice

Thematic description of CGMS level 1

Goals and assumptions

Daily meteorological station data are used in two ways for crop yield evaluations. First as weather indicators for a direct evaluation of alarming situations such as drought, extreme rainfall during sowing, flowering or harvest etc. Second, as input for the crop growth model WOFOST (see § 3.4).

Weather is the general condition of the atmosphere and the processes occurring in it. These processes vary in time and space from a few seconds for small scale eddies to a few weeks for large depressions. For the CGMS only the atmospheric conditions near the earth surface are relevant. The CGMS focuses on a time scale of one day and a spatial scale of 50 by 50 km which should be the optimum scales to evaluate effects of weather on crops yields at European level regarding also data availability and resources.