Abstract
Abstract. Sub-daily meteorological observations are needed for input to and assessment of high-resolution reanalysis products to improve understanding of weather and climate variability. While there are millions of such weather observations that have been collected by various organisations, many are yet to be transcribed into a useable format.Under the auspices of the Uncertainties in Ensembles of Regional ReAnalyses (UERRA) project, we describe the compilation and development of a digital dataset of 8.8 million meteorological observations of essential climate variables (ECVs) rescued across the European and southern Mediterranean region. By presenting the entire chain of data preparation, from the identification of regions lacking in digitised sub-daily data and the location of original sources, through the digitisation of the observations to the quality control procedures applied, we provide a rescued dataset that is as traceable as possible for use by the research community.Data from 127 stations and of 15 climate variables in the northern African and European sectors have been prepared for the period 1877 to 2012. Quality control of the data using a two-step semi-automatic statistical approach identified 3.5 % of observations that required correction or removal, on par with previous data rescue efforts.In addition to providing a new sub-daily meteorological dataset for the research community, our experience in the development of this sub-daily dataset gives us an opportunity to share some suggestions for future data rescue projects.All versions of the dataset, from the raw digitised data to data that have been quality controlled and converted to standard units, are available on PANGAEA: https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.886511 (Ashcroft et al., 2018).
Highlights
Digitising meteorological observations into a useable modern format is crucial for long-term climate monitoring and meteorological service development
Shorter but more widespread observations were rescued across Morocco, Turkey and the Balkans region, while the snowfall observations in Germany only covered the west of the country
This study describes our process of identifying, digitising and quality controlling an extensive set of sub-daily meteorological observations across Europe and the southern Mediterranean for use by the wider research community
Summary
Digitising meteorological observations into a useable modern format is crucial for long-term climate monitoring and meteorological service development. High-quality observations are needed for almost all aspects of meteorological and climatological research, but many spatial and temporal gaps still exist in data products currently used by the international research community (Brunet and Jones, 2011). For this reason, meteorological data rescue and recovery is becoming increasingly important, in developing countries and for the early instrumental period, as data are often only available in paper format and are at great risk of being permanently lost (Brunet and Jones, 2011; Page et al, 2004; World Meteorological Organization, 2016). Additional initiatives on a national to regional scale, led by meteorological agencies (e.g. Kaspar et al, 2015) and research projects (e.g. Ashcroft et al, 2014; Brunet et al, 2006, 2014a), have located and digitised meteorological observations, and ensured that they are made available to the scientific community
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