Datasets/Regional Climatologies/Europe

This region is defined by 25° to 81°N and by 32°W to 66°E. These climatologies were constructed by Declan Conway during the period July 1994 to May 1995 and followed on the work originally done by T.Jiang during September to December 1993. At present fields exist for TMP, TMX, TMN, PRE, RD0, VAP, WND, SUN, CLD and FRS and at three elevations LO, MN and HI. The raw station data which was used in the interpolation was obtained by CRU directly from National Met. Services in the region, the acquisition of which is described in Hulme (1994). A total of 12,499 0.5° latitude/longitude cells exist for the region. The mean elevation climatologies for TMP, TMX, TMN, VAP, CLD, WND and PRE are presently loaded in SCENGEN.

For this region we have also constructed (May 1995) monthly anomaly files for TMP and PRE for the same region and the same grid covering the 34 years from 1961 to 1994. These anomalies derive from the long historical gridded global data sets of Hulme (precipitation) and Jones (temperature). The anomaly files have been re-centred to allow for interpolation errors and the anomalies have been calculated up to December 1994 using the GU23WLD0094.DAT dataset for precipitation.

The construction of this climatology has been fully described in Hulme et al. (1995a,b) and the work has been funded by the Natural Environment Research Council through a TIGER IV sub-contract from the Environmental Change Unit at the University of Oxford.

Hulme,M. (1994): The cost of climate data: a European experience Weather, 49, 168-175
Hulme,M., Conway,D., Jones,P.D., Jiang,T., Zhou,X., Barrow,E.M. and Turney,C. (1995a): A 1961-90 Gridded Surface Climatology for Europe Climatic Research Unit, Norwich, 51pp. (plus maps).
Hulme,M., Conway,D., Jones,P.D., Jiang,T., Barrow,E.M. and Turney,C. (1995b): Construction of a 1961-90 European climatology for climate modelling and impacts applications Int. J. Climatol., 13, 1333-1363.