ArticlePloS one2024
Weather or not-Global climate databases: Reliable on tropical mountains?
Article in PloS one, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Patterns and Geographical Mechanism of Altitudinal Belts in Tropical African Mountains.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Review
- Gain and loss: Human and environmental wellbeing - drivers of Kilimanjaro's decreasing biodiversity.PloS one · 2025Article
- Deforestation amplifies climate change effects on warming and cloud level rise in African montane forests.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Major distribution shifts are projected for key rangeland grasses under a high-emission scenario in East Africa at the end of the 21Communications earth & environment · 2024Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Global, spatially interpolated climate datasets such as WorldClim and CHELSA, widely used in research, are based on station data, which are rare in tropical mountains. However, such biodiversity hotspots are of high ecological interest and require accurate data. Therefore, the quality of such gridded datasets needs to be assessed. This poses a kind of dilemma, as proving the reliability of these potentially weakly modelled data is usually not possible due to the lack of stations. Using a unique climate dataset with 170 stations, mainly from the montane and alpine zones of sixteen mountains in Tanzania including Kilimanjaro, we show that the accuracy of such datasets is very poor. Not only is the maximum amount of mean annual precipitation drastically underestimated (partly more than 50%), but also the elevation of the precipitation maximum deviates up to 850m. Our results show that, at least in tropical regions, they should be used with greater caution than before.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.