Authors’ reply: Station data and modelled climate data in Africa

摘要

We thank Dr Shaman for his valuable comments [1] on our article [2]. We agree that it is challenging to study environmental determinants of diseases in locations where data are scarce. There are certainly weaknesses in the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) TS 3.21 dataset that could have affected our con- clusions. This dataset was based on large climate data- sets gathered by the World Meteorological Organization and the United States National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. To maximise the use of available climate data, particularly in regions with imperfect station coverage, historical data, distant sta- tion data and station data of related climatic variables were processed and interpolated to provide modelled climatic data at a global scale. Technical details are available in an article written by Harris et al. [3].