Climate data available for re-use!
Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) hosts the European Climate & Dataset (ECA&D) project team and web site that makes available climate data free of financial charge.
The ECA&D web site states:
“Welcome to the website of the European Climate Assessment & Dataset (ECA&D) project. Presented is information on changes in weather and climate extremes, as well as the daily dataset needed to monitor and analyse these extremes. ECA&D is initiated by the European Climate Support Network ECSN and supported by the Network of European Meteorological Services EUMETNET.”
--
During January 2010 ECA&D project team a document titled: ’European Climate Assessment & Dataset (ECA&D)’ Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document (ATBD). Page 3 of the document provides background to the project and states:
“The European Climate Assessment & Dataset project (ECA&D) started in 2003 as the follow-up to ECA (for which KNMI was responsible member since 1998). Between 2003 and 2008 the project has been partially funded by EUMETNET. From 2009 onwards, KNMI has committed itself to fund ECA&D. ECA&D has now obtained the status of Regional Climate Centre (RCC) for high resolution observation data in WMO Region VI (Europe and the Middle East).
The objective of ECA&D is to analyze the temperature and precipitation climate of WMO region VI, with special focus on trends in climatic extremes observed at meteorological stations. For this purpose, a dataset of 20thcentury daily surface air temperature and precipitation series has been compiled (Klein Tank et al. 2002a) and tested for homogeneity (Wijngaard et al. 2003).
To enable periodic assessments of climate change on a European scale, a sustainable system for data gathering, archiving, quality control, analysis and dissemination has been realized. Data gathering refers to long-term daily resolution climatic time series from meteorological stations throughout Europe and the Mediterranean provided by contributing parties (mostly National Meteorological Services (NMSs)) from over 40 countries. Most series cover at least the period 1946–now. Archiving refers to transformation of the series to standardized formats and storage in a centralized relational database system. Quality control uses fixed procedures to check the data and attach quality and homogeneity flags. Analysis refers to the calculation of (extremes) indices according to internationally agreed procedures specified by the CCL/CLIVAR/JCOMM Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI, http://www.clivar.org/organization/etccdi/etccdi.php ). Finally, dissemination refers to making available both the daily data (including quality flags) and the indices results to users through a dedicated website.
Recently, the necessary steps have been completed for an improved operational ECA&D system as the first implementation of a Regional Climate Centre (RCC) functionality for high resolution observational data and extremes indices in WMO Region VI. This implies that the system has been made more sustainable/transparent and has been embedded into KNMIs information infrastructure. This ensures ongoing support, guarantees well performing up-and-running services and documentation, backup- and maintenance procedures.
The ECA&D project was presented at the 2009 INSPIRE Conference in a presentation titled: INSPIRE impact study for the meteorological Community. KNMI Use Case: Climate Data
WMO RA VI considers private sector
Netherlands PSI re-users call for action!
INSPIRE 2009: Presentations published
- 170 reads
