ECA&D:
The European Climate Assessment & Dataset (ECA&D) contains daily land station observations for >7500 stations throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. The data is provided by National Meteorological Services, Universities as well as by other data providers. Everyone with daily station observations can participate.
The available elements are:
- Minimum temperature
- Mean temperature
- Maximum temperature
- Precipitation amount
- Sea level pressure
- Snow depth
- Relative humidity
- Sunshine duration
- Cloud cover
- Wind speed
- Maximum wind gust
- Wind direction
About half of the daily station series are available for download for non-commercial research projects and education. The ECA&D data policy gives more details about the use of the available data. Often, additional metadata is available, such as the surface coverage of the station, soil type or a picture of the observing site.
Basic quality control is performed on each of the series. The station series are then blended with those from nearby stations and the Global Telecommunication System (GTS) to create series that are as long as possible. These series are used to derive a large variety of indices of extremes, such as the number of wet days, number of frost days, but also more exotic indices like the growing season length, potential evapotranspiration and the universal thermal climate index. Time series plots as well as derived information, such as trends and anomalies, are available and shown on maps. Also homogeneity checks are done and climatologies are calculated.
E-OBS:
The blended station series are used to create the E-OBS gridded dataset which has a daily resolution. A three-step methodology of interpolating the daily data is used: interpolating the monthly mean using thin-plate splines to define the underlying spatial ‘‘trend’’ of the data; kriging the anomalies with regard to the monthly mean; and applying the interpolated anomaly to the interpolated monthly mean to create the final result. Files with daily standard errors and elevation are available too.
E-OBS is available for the period 1950-present. There are 4 different versions: 2 grid resolutions x 2 grid flavours. Data is made available on a 0.25 and 0.5 degree regular lat-lon grid, as well as on a 0.22 and 0.44 degree rotated pole grid, with the north pole at 39.25N, 162W. The dataset is available for 5 elements:
- Minimum temperature
- Mean temperature
- Maximum temperature
- Precipitation amount
- Sea level pressure
References:
- ATBD: Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document.
- Klein Tank, A.M.G. and et al., 2002. Daily dataset of 20th-century surface air temperature and precipitation series for the European Climate Assessment. Int. J. Climatol., 22, 1441-1453, doi:10.1002/joc.773.
- Klok, E.J. and A.M.G. Klein Tank, 2009. Updated and extended European dataset of daily climate observations. Int. J. Climatol., 29, 1182, doi:10.1002/joc.1779.
- Haylock, M.R., N. Hofstra, A.M.G. Klein Tank, E.J. Klok, P.D. Jones, and M. New (2008), A European daily high-resolution gridded data set of surface temperature and precipitation for 1950-2006. J. Geophys. Res., 113, D20119, doi:10.1029/2008JD010201.
- van den Besselaar, E.J.M., M.R. Haylock, G. van der Schrier, A.M.G. Klein Tank, 2011, A European Daily High-resolution Observational Gridded Data set of Sea Level Pressure, J. Geophys. Res., 116, D11110, doi:10.1029/2010JD015468