Estimating Summer Design Temperatures from Daily Maximum Temperatures in New Mexico

Abstract

Many climatological locations report only maximum and minimum temperatures. However, in certain applications, such as estimation of design temperatures, the frequency distribution of hourly temperatures is required. For this reason, a method is developed for estimating the mathematical form of the upper half of the cumulative probability distribution function (CDF) for hourly temperatures from the CDF for daily maximum temperatures for the summer months of June, July and August. In this method, an exponential function is fitted to the daily maximum CDF. A procedure for estimating the hourly CDF from the daily CDF is presented. This method is used to estimate summer design temperatures for a number of stations in New Mexico.