326 Y. H. Zurigat et al.

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Figure 2. Monthly mean temperature for Seeb TMY and long term monthly averages
(Sawaqed et al., 2004).

The latter were computed by averaging the monthly means over the 17 years’ data
considered. It is seen that the TMY data closely represent the long term data. Con-
sidering the TMY, in general, solar radiation flux data indicate monthly averages
between 400 and 725 W/m2 with December and January having the minimum and
May having the maximum. The monthly mean solar flux exceeds 600 W/m2 for 5
months (April through to August). Figure 2 indicates that the hottest months are
May through to July which have monthly mean temperature values of over 34°C
while the coolest months are December through to February where the monthly
mean temperature does not exceed 22°C.
To visualize the severity of the weather conditions over the 17 years, the extreme
values of several indicators were extracted from the data for Seeb. Figure 3 shows
the yearly maximum wind indicators; mean wind speed (Ws,mean), max gust
(Ws,gust) and max sustained-10 minutes (Ws,sust). Also shown are the minimum
and maximum temperatures (Tmin, Tmax, respectively). The maximum temperature
reaches as high as 49.5°C and the minimum temperature as low as 10°C. The wind
speed indicators (see Fig. 3) show that the maximum mean wind speed ranges
between 10 and 20 knots (1 knot = 1.852 kilometer/hour) whereas the max gust
reaches as high as 46 knots and ranges between 30 and 46 knots.
The yearly average values of the indicators discussed above along with the relative
humidity (RH) are shown in Fig. 4. It is observed that the yearly average maximum
and minimum temperatures are almost constant at 33 and 24°C respectively, whereas

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