08 Sep 2017
Accumulated temperature data for agriculture
Temperature, and especially accumulated temperature, is an important factor and plays a fundamental role in agricultural productivity. Plants and insects develop in accordance with the temperature. The warmer the weather, the faster they grow and reproduce; the colder it is, the more slowly these processes go.
All species have a biological minimum temperature level, below which development does not take place at all. When the temperature of the environment begins to exceed this minimum level, it gives a start to growth and reproduction. The value of this basic temperature (or a development threshold) has a crucial significance, and it differs between species of plants and insects.
Accumulated temperature (AT) represents an integrated excess or lack of temperature in relation to a fixed starting point. This index is calculated as the sum of the average daily temperatures of air and soil, above a chosen threshold of 0°C, 5°C or 10°C, or a biological minimum temperature level.
Basically, this is a way of including temperature and time into one dimension for quantitative evaluation of the speed of growth of plants and insects. Usually the index of accumulated temperature data is used to create models of crop growth.
In the near future, we will introduce our new API for accumulated temperature data. It will be based on historical data, and will be focused primarily on users in the agricultural sector.