Weather or not—Global climate databases: Reliable on tropical mountains?

lower slopes are mostly cultivated and surrounded by agriculture or savannah vegetation at the foothills. The climate on Kilimanjaro, located 300 km south of the equator, is typically tropical-equa- torial and depends on the elevation. The mean annual temperature decreases linearly from 24˚C in the savannah at 700 m a.s.l. to -7˚C at the summit, while annual precipitation has a hump-shaped pattern, peaking at mid-altitudes in the montane forest belt. Due to wind expo- sure from the Indian Ocean, the southern and eastern slopes are wetter than the northern and western slopes [14,17]. This is similar on Meru, while on the other mountains, which are much lower, MAP rises to the summit according to our measurements. Fig 3. Location of used weather stations on Kilimanjaro. Blue dots: Stations of various sources, red dots: Own stations. Black line: Division of the northern and southern slope following [14]. Green line: Demarcation of Kilimanjaro National Park. Reprinted from World Imagery Basemap (Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics, and the GIS User Community) under a CC BY license, with permission from Esri Deutschland GmbH, original copyright 2024. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299363.g003 PLOS ONE Global climate datasets on tropical mountains PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299363 March 13, 2024 5 / 12