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Selection of Reference Period
Introduction
In order to evaluate crop growth, historical data need to be present for the area under study. In different countries, datasets differ substantially. Some countries have a long record even dating back into the years 1800. Some countries have experienced poverty, war or other disruptions in record taking and keeping and do hardly have any records.
WMO (The World Meteorological Organization) has initiated many so-called data rescue projects. These projects aim at gathering (agro)meteorological data and entering them into databases. See an example of one of these projects in South East Asia: http://www.vsamp.com/resume/publications/Page_et_al_2004.pdf
The reference period should at least reflect the latest 30-year climatological periods defined by WMO (1961-1990 or 1970-2000). The second priority level would be since the main meteorological instrumented period (1870-2000), whereas the third level would be since earliest measurements (about 1750).