Fig. 3

Correlations between climatic variables and oil palm yield by time-lag, with corresponding fruit development stages. a Correlations between raw climatic variables and raw oil palm yield; b correlations between climatic variable anomalies and yield anomalies. Crosses denote climatic predictors (i.e., climatic variables at a specific time-lag) included in the statistical models of yield. We selected climatic predictors for inclusion in the models from their high correlations with yield relative to other time-lags, at time-lags which correspond to key stages of oil palm fruit development, but avoided inclusion of inter-correlated predictors in the models (see Additional file 1: Text S2 for details). Stages of fruit development follow Corley and Tinker (2016, Sect. 5.4.1). See Table 1 for a summary of existing studies which have detected effects of climate at stages of oil palm fruit development