THE CLIMATE OF ISRAEL OBSERVATION, RESEARCH AND APPLICATIONS First published in Hebrew by Bar-Han University Press Yair Goldreich THE CLIMATE OF ISRAEL Observations, Research and Application Copyright Bar-Han University, Ramat-Gan Printed in Israel, 1998 j"""~U "'N' 'N'~'!1 t3"PNf1 tn'lJ'" "j:m ,n"£J~n THE CLIMATE OF ISRAEL OBSERVATION, RESEARCH AND APPLICATION Yair Goldreich Bar-Ilan University Ramat-Gan. Israel Springer Science+Business Media, LLC ISBN 978-1-4613-5200-6 ISBN 978-1-4615-0697-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4615-0697-3 ©2003 Springer Science+Business Media New York Originally published by Kluwer Academic / Plenum Publishers,New York in 2003 Softcover reprint of the hardcover Ist edition 2003 http://www.wkap.nll 1098765432 A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress AII rights reserved No par! of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Preface This book describes and analyses various aspects of Israeli climate. This work also elucidates how both man and nature adjust to various climates. The first part (Chapters 1-9) deals with the meteorological and climatological network stations, the history of climate research in Israel, analysis of the local climate by season, and a discussion of the climate variables their spatial and temporal distribution. The second part (Chapters 10-14) of this work is devoted to a survey of applied climatology. This part presents information on weather forecasting, rainfall enhancement, air quality monitoring, and various climatological aspects of planning. There is no sharp division between theoretical and applied climatology topics. Moreover, though various sections seem exclusively theoretical, they also include important applications for various real life situations (such as rainfall intensities (Section 5.3), frost, frost damage (Section 6.2.4), degree-days (Section 6.2.5) and heat stress (Section 6.2.6). Professionals and university students of geography and earth science, meteorology and climatology, even high school students majoring in geography will be able to use this book as a basic reference work. Researchers in atmospheric science can also use this work as an important source of reference. Students of agriculture will also gain theoretical and practical insights. Even architects and engineers will gain another perspective in their fields. A comprehensive glossary was included to help readers to better understand the more technical and specialized terms used in the text. To facilitate fluent reading, lengthy and detailed explanations were excluded. Efforts were made to keep footnotes few and concise. For the readers' convenience, the full bibliography instead of partial bibliographies (Hebrew and other sources) at the end of each chapter, is presented at the end of the book. References, including the original language of publication, appear within the text (author/s, year of publication). References not specifically referring to the Mediterranean area are marked with an asterisk (*). When the referred research appears in multiple forms (a Ph.D. dissertation, research report, a scientific journal article; either in Hebrew and another language), only one source is cited. When citing source from various sources, first preference was given to articles published in international journals. Articles appearing in refereed Israeli journals (such as the Israel Journal of Earth Sciences; Israel Meteorological Research Papers), took preference over articles appearing in other local journals. Last preference was given to less accessible sources or unpublished material. Often, particularly with important topics, we have chosen to refer to the less accessible [English] source material as well as the more acceptable Hebrew source material. A last passing comment, the Hebrew language journal, Meteorologia BeIsrael often cited and quoted, has over the thirty years of its publication, changed its format twice. In some volumes each bulletin is paginated separately, while in others there is continuous pagination for the whole volume. Thus, the pagination of this major source varies. v vi PREFACE Hebrew terms used in this work are those published in the Meteorological Dictionaryl of the Hebrew Language Academy. Popular Hebrew weather terms were generally avoided. However, to avoid ambiguity popular terms were used. For example, the popular nonscientific term sea breeze was used instead of the scientific term sea wind; because sea wind might here be misinterpreted as a general term referring to a westerly wind. The new international units (SI - System International), such as meter, kilogram and second were used. For example, the pressure unit Hecto-pascal (hPa) is used, instead of the millibar (which is the same size as the hPa) still commonly used on synoptic charts; work (and energy) units joule were used instead of Langley unit (in the solar radiation domain); when not otherwise mentioned, temperatures are in Celsius. Wind speed units were applied, according to the conventional use in each particular field, meters/seconds, knots, and kmlhour. Hours cited are local wintertime, which is two hours earlier than the UTC (Universal Time Coordinated, formerly Greenwich Mean Time). To change the data from wintertime to summertime (which is three hours earlier than the UTC), an hour should be added to wintertime. Generally, the conventional 5% (0.05) statistical level of significance was applied, this means that there are about 5 chances in 100 that to reject the hypothesis when it should be accepted. Although it is unconventional to present data in both tables and figures, we have sometimes presented data in both forms. For instance, it is more convenient to examine the spatial distribution on a map and to find the exact value on a table. Geographical data are generally presented by the three longitude strips oflsrael (Coastal Plain, the mountainlhilly region and the Jordan Rift Valley); the data for each strip are displayed from north to south. This is also the conventional display format of Israeli Meteorological Service publications. Only recently, has the Meteorological Service applied a new method to display data, by geo-climate regions (See Fig. 2.10). Using this new system, it is easier to compare data of the same region, yet, using the former system of longitude strips, it is less difficult to locate the specific weather station. Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues at the various institutions for their assistance in completing this work. A special thanks to those colleagues who critically read and made constructive suggestions for the improvement of the section of the manuscript in their specific field: Zvi Alperson, Director ofIMS (Chapter 10); Prof. Pinhas Alpert, the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences, Tel-Aviv University (Chapters 3, 4 and Section 11.2); Prof. Stephen Brenner, Israel Oceanographic and Lirnnological Research Ltd. (Section 11.2); Prof. Uri Dayan, Department of Geography, The Hebrew University (Section 12.2); Dr. Eli'ezer Ganor, Head of Physics Unit, Environmental Studies Institute, Ministry of Environment, Ramat Aviv (Chapter 8); Prof. Yoel Gat, Isotopes Department, Weizmann Institute (Section 9.1); Zipora Gat, Head of Agrometeorological Unit, IMS (Chapter 7 and Sections 6.2.4, 13.1); Dr. Michael Graber, (Former) Head of Air Quality Unit, Ministry of Environment (Section 12.2); Prof. Gedalyahu Gvirtzman, I The Hebrew Language Academy, the Meteorological Service and Massada Publication, 1971. Y.L. Tokatley wrote and published by the Defense Ministry, 1994, an updated dictionary with the same name, including not only the translation ofthe term but also its definition. PREFACE vii Department of Geography, Bar-Dan University (Section 9.1); Dr. Amiran Ianetz, Research and Development Unit, IMS (Section 6.1); Prof. Haim Kutiel, Department of Geography, Haifa University, (Chapter 5); Eng. Nurit Perlow, Wind Energy Unit Coordinator, Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure (Chapter 14); Prof. Daniel Rosenfeld, Atmospheric Sciences Department the Hebrew University (Chapter 11 and Sections 3.6, 9.3); Sarah Rubin, Head of Climate Unit, IMS (Chapter 2 and Section 6.2); Prof. David Sharon Earth Sciences Institute, The Hebrew University (Section 5.4); Prof. Dov Skibin, the Nuclear Research Center, Negev (Chapter 14 and Section 13.3); Prof. Gerald Stanhill, Water and Soil Institute, Agricultural Research Organization (the Volcani Center), Bet Dagan (Sections 6.1, 7.1); Dr. Lutz Striem formerly of the Nuclear Research Center, Soreq (Chapter 5 and Section 9.2); Yehuda Tokatly, former Director IMS (Chapter I); Samuel Yaffe, former Director IMS (Chapter 4 and Sections 2.4, 5.2.3.4); Prof. Abraham Zangvil, Institute for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University (Chapters 3, 4). I would like to thank various publishers, authors, and copyright holders of various publications for the use of figures, tables, maps and photographs: My gratitude is given to Zvi Alperson, Director ofIMS and Samuel Yaffe, former Director, for permission to copy figures and tables from IMS publications and from the Israel Meteorological Research Papers; Ja'akov Lomas, Chairman of the Israeli Meteorological Union, for permission to use material from Meteorologia beIsrael; Weizmann Institute Publication, for material from the Journals: Mada (Fig. 8.8) and Israel Journal of Earth Sciences (Figs. 4.1; 4.3; 4.4; 7.11; 12.3). The publishers of HaSsadeh and Horizons in Geography journals; American Meteorological Society for permission to use material from the journals: Journal of (Climate and) Applied Meteorology (Figs. 4.12; 4.13; 4.14; 4.15; 9.9; 10.2; 10.3; 10.4; 11.4) and Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (Figs. 3.6; 3.7); American Geophysical Union for permission to use material from the journals: Journal of Geophysical Research (Fig.