Re: Mediterranean climate regions rainfall data

I've always found it intriguing that Hawaii had med
climates on the leeward sides, especially Maui, but
also Hawai'i, Kauai, etc. Most of the chain has a
winter rainfall maximum. Maui is small enough to avoid
summer convection rain on the leeward side, but high
enough to block summer tradewind showers there.
Hawai'i the Big Island is so big that it heats up and
draws humid air off the ocean which develops into
convection rain on the leeward side above Kona. Still,
it's got pretty much a med climate on the leeward.

What other areas of the tropics have winter rainfall
peaks? I've heard the coast of NE Brazil does as well.
Any data out there?

And while I'm at it, has anyone grown Hawaiian
Sapindus saponaria or Sophora chrysophylla (mamane)?
The latter would seem especially well-adapted to a med
climate.

I would argue that the shift from winter to summer
rainfall peak around the Colorado river in the low
desert is a sharp shift (the saguaro line), but not
quite like what happens around The Cape of Good Hope
or the Alpes Maritimes of France.

I _love_ this kind of discussion.

Cheers,
Jason


--- Lee Poulsen <wlp@ampersand.jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:
> I don't know if anyone is interested in this, but I
> was looking at 
> some climatological data and decided to play around
> with plotting 
> some rainfall data from "mediterranean" areas around
> the world and 
> see how they compare. I picked a representative
> location from each 
> place (and ended up hopping all the way around the
> Mediterranean 
> basin) and noticed a few interesting things. Maybe
> this can provide 
> some insight into why plants from some of these
> regions tolerate or 
> require conditions that sometimes frustrate people
> who try growing 
> them in one of the other "mediterranean" areas.
> Maybe not...
> 
> I have created a PDF file (readable with the free
> Adobe Acrobat 
> Reader
>
<http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html>)
> of one 
> of the plots I made which I have attached.
> 
> Anyway, a few things I noticed were:
> 
> 1. The Perth area and Adelaide area of Australia and
> the Cape Town 
> area of South Africa have much wetter summers than
> the other 
> mediterranean areas. However, so does the region
> from Marseille, 
> France to Rome, Italy. This was a surprise to me. It
> was also 
> interesting to see that Marseille and Rome both have
> their peak 
> maximum rainfall in October (mid-autumn) rather than
> mid-winter like 
> everywhere else, even though their peak minimum
> rainfall occurs in 
> mid-summer (July, or January for the southern
> hemisphere).
> 
> 2. The mid-highland areas on the dry side of the
> Hawaiian islands of 
> Maui and Lanai seem to have a temperature and
> rainfall profile that 
> to my eyeball looks just like any other recognized
> mediterranean 
> climate region. (Although their peak minimum
> rainfall seems to occur 
> one month earlier than everywhere else.) I suspected
> this after 
> having seen all the banksia and protea and
> eucalyptus growing at that 
> elevation in Maui. I wonder if there are any other
> islands or 
> highland areas in the subtropics with similar
> conditions that are 
> also effectively mediterranean. (This would give us
> "six" 
> mediterranean climate regions in the world...)
> 
> 3. Other than the 6 month shift and the higher
> summer rainfall in 
> Australia, I was surprised to see that Perth and
> Beirut, Lebanon have 
> almost identical monthly rainfall patterns. I
> wouldn't have guessed 
> that those two places were so climatically similar.
> 
> 4. This isn't shown in the plot, but I was surprised
> at how very 
> rapidly the "mediterranean" pattern disappears as
> one moves away 
> towards the northeast or east from Cape Town, South
> Africa, or 
> towards the north, northwest, or west from the
> French Riviera into 
> areas that aren't mediterranean---unlike the
> analogous situation in 
> California and Baja California, or in Chile, or in
> the Perth and 
> Adelaide areas of Australia, or in the rest of the
> Mediterranean 
> basin, (or as one heads north from Cape Town), where
> the rainfall 
> pattern gradually merges into a different climate
> rainfall pattern 
> (most often a desert-like one).
> 
> 5. Based on the rainfall patterns for different
> parts of New Zealand 
> that are easily available, I can't understand why
> they can grow so 
> much mediterranean climate stuff there so easily.
> Auckland, 
> Wellington, and Christchurch are all much wetter
> year-round than the 
> "standard" mediterranean regions.
> 
> Anyway, I hope a few people find the plot useful.

> ATTACHMENT part 2 application/pdf name=Medit.pdf;
x-mac-type=50444620; x-mac-creator=4341524F
> -- 
> --Lee Poulsen
> Pasadena area, California, USDA Zone 9-10
> wlp@radar-sci.jpl.nasa.gov


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