The limits of the vegetative period, defined based on daily mean temperature: a comparison of various approaches

Abstract

The vegetative period can be defined by using daily mean temperature values. In Czech and Slovak climatological praxis, temperatures of 5 °C, 10 °C and 15 °C are used to limit different parts of the vegetative period. This article analyses and compares two basic methods for the estimation of the beginning and end date of the vegetative period: a method of consecutive days and a method operating with temperature sums. The first method works only with the number of days with a temperature above the given limit; the second examines the particular temperature values. These two methods (or three – because the first method has two variants, 6 or 5 consecutive days) were tested on a so-called technical series for 268 climatological stations of the Czech Republic and assembled during the period of 1961–2007. Also, long-term averages instead of data from particular years were utilized for analysation. ProClimDB software, which is also available in a freeware version, has been developed for all the calculations.