On a visit to Manila some time ago, I visited a golf course and had a look around with the golf course superintendent. Our discussion turned to seasonal changes in weather and the relative impact on the grass. For example, in the winter, when the temperatures are a little cooler, is it lower temperatures that have a big impact on slowing the growth? Or might it be the light, because the days in winter are a little shorter and the sun is a little lower in the sky?

I made some calculations then, and reran the script now to refresh my memory about this.

I calculated what the photosynthetic light would be on a sunny day in each month.

That's how the photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD) will be throughout the year when there are no clouds. It varies a bit.

For the total light per day we can look at the daily light integral (DLI), and this is how the DLI changes through the year.

The PPFD is how much light reaches the turf every second. Adding together the light from each second, from sunrise until sunset, gives the total amount for the day -- the DLI.

What about temperature? Manila is 13 degrees north of the equator with a tropical climate. The coldest month is January, with an average temperature of 25.6°C. The hottest month is May, with an average temperature of 29.5°C. That's a difference of 3.9°C from the coldest to the hottest month.

The sunny day DLI ranges from about 44 to 59 mol m^-2 d^-1. So which changes more, the temperature, or the light?

To look at that, I plotted the standard score (z-score) for the DLI and for the temperature across 12 months. The z-score shows how many standard deviations a value is from the average (mean).

If the z-score is less than 0, that means the value for that month is less than the average for the year. If the z-score is more than 0, that means the value for that month is more than the average for the year.

Because the z-scores are standardized, I can compare directly the DLI and the temperature, and how much they are changing in any one month, compared to their average value during the year.

At Manila on sunny days, the temperature varies relatively more than the light in January, February, April, and May. In March, and from June through December, the light varies relatively more than the temperature.