Datos climáticos históricos para las regiones españolas. CRU TS 2.1

Abstract

Our work translates the global data base of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/), known as CRU TS 2.1, into regional data for Spain at two levels: autonomous communities (Comunidades Autónomas, NUTS 2) and provinces (NUTS 3).The original data base, which is in grid form, is not suitable for social scientists and historians for two reasons. On the one hand, they are not yet familiar with the new Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology which is necessary for handling this type of data structure. On the other hand, and more importantly, GIS data in grid form cannot be directly combined with the data usually available to these researchers.This transformation makes it possible to perform two tasks. We can compare this data base directly with statistics from meteorological stations and examine the consistency between data sources. In addition, we can combine the transformed data base with demographic and socioeconomic data normally available only in formats that depend on a country's administrative and political structure.