Clima

CLIMA is a composite component, made of basic components containing routines to produce synthetic values of the most relevant climate variables (precipitation, air temperature, solar radiation, vapor pressure deficit, wind speed, reference evapotranspiration) from existing daily weather data, largely based on approaches already implemented in weather generators (e.g. ClimGen) and other data analysis tools (e.g. RadEst). Daily values of precipitation, air temperature, and wind speed are generated from stochastic processes. For other variables, such as solar radiation, vapor pressure deficit, and reference evapotranspiration, synthetic values are produced by physically-based relationships. The routines for weather generation/estimation are implemented into sub-components: Rain (precipitation) AirT (air temperature), GSRad (global solar radiation and related variables), Wind (wind speed), ET (reference evapotrasnpiration and related variables).

The component implements the test of pre-conditions and post-conditions for each of the models provided, allowing an input on screen, TXT or XML file; custom output drivers can also be developed. Moreover, data sets used to perform unit tests on each of the models made available is also provided as part of this documentation.

The component can be freely used and distributed by modellers and developers in their own applications, if the application contains either a dedicated menu item or a dedicated button calling the Info() method of the component, and links to the original help file. This method displays information about the component and a button which activates the help of the component (examples of how to do this are shown in the sample applications provided to illustrate the use of the component). The models component design allows for extensions by the users that can add easily their own models. Sample clients are provided inclusive of source code to demonstrate how to add models (C# version), and to build a Win .NET application (C# version). A sample web service and a sample web application are available on line (http://www.sipeaa.it/tools) as further examples of possible use of the model component.