Abstract
Interpolated climate data have become essential for regional or local climate change impact assessments and the development of climate change adaptation strategies. Here, we contribute an accessible, comprehensive database of interpolated climate data for Europe that includes monthly, annual, decadal, and 30-year normal climate data for the last 119 years (1901 to 2019) as well as multi-model CMIP5 climate change projections for the 21st century. The database also includes variables relevant for ecological research and infrastructure planning, comprising more than 20,000 climate grids that can be queried with a provided ClimateEU software package. In addition, 1 km and 2.5 km resolution gridded data generated by the software are available for download. The quality of ClimateEU estimates was evaluated against weather station data for a representative subset of climate variables. Dynamic environmental lapse rate algorithms employed by the software to generate scale-free climate variables for specific locations lead to improvements of 10 to 50% in accuracy compared to gridded data. We conclude with a discussion of applications and limitations of this database.
Highlights
Background & SummaryInterpolated climate data have become an essential tool for researchers, natural resource managers, policy makers and analysts to assess climate change impacts and to develop climate change adaptation strategies[1,2,3]
These original datasets are further enhanced by our software packages by using lapse rate adjustments that dynamically vary for each variable and each geographic location[9], adjusting for the difference between the grid elevation and the elevation of the location of interest
Our objective is to provide a comprehensive solution to: (1) generate climate grids for a wide range of climate variables and time periods at any resolution and in any projection for custom study areas; (2) accurately characterize climate conditions for a location and time period of interest, such as a study site, for which an on-site station data is not available or for which the station record is incomplete; (3) generate historical time series for one or many sample locations for time series analysis; and (4) provide simple access to future projections from 15 selected Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCMs) for climate change impact and adaptation planning that relies on comparing past 30-year climate normal conditions with those that may be expected over the coming decades
Summary
Interpolated climate data have become an essential tool for researchers, natural resource managers, policy makers and analysts to assess climate change impacts and to develop climate change adaptation strategies[1,2,3]. Our objective is to provide a comprehensive solution to: (1) generate climate grids for a wide range of climate variables and time periods at any resolution and in any projection for custom study areas; (2) accurately characterize climate conditions for a location and time period of interest, such as a study site, for which an on-site station data is not available or for which the station record is incomplete; (3) generate historical time series for one or many sample locations for time series analysis; and (4) provide simple access to future projections from 15 selected AOGCMs for climate change impact and adaptation planning that relies on comparing past 30-year climate normal conditions with those that may be expected over the coming decades Another unique characteristic of our software solution is that the size of the total database of more than 20,000 climate surfaces is kept manageable by storing only the 1961–1990 climate reference period at high resolution while expressing all other periods (historical monthly, seasonal, annual or decadal as well as future projections) as anomalies from this reference normal at lower resolution[15,16]. We further evaluated a representative subset of climate variables against observed station data, and we report error estimates for climate normals and historical data
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