Robinson, E.L.; Blyth, E.; Clark, D.B.; Finch, J.; Rudd, A.C.

Climate hydrology and ecology research support system meteorology dataset for Great Britain (1961-2012) [CHESS-met]
(CHESS-met)

https://doi.org/10.5285/80887755-1426-4dab-a4a6-250919d5020c Cite this dataset

THIS DATASET HAS BEEN SUPERSEDED. The latest version is Climate hydrology and ecology research support system meteorology dataset for Great Britain (1961-2017) [CHESS-met]

If you need access to this archived version, please contact the EIDC

1km resolution gridded meteorological variables over Great Britain for the years 1961-2012. This dataset contains time series of daily mean values of air temperature (K), specific humidity (kg kg-1), wind speed (m s-1), downward longwave radiation (W m-2), downward shortwave radiation (W m-2), precipitation (kg m-2 s-1) and air pressure (Pa), plus daily temperature range (K). These are the variables required to run the JULES land surface model [1] with daily disaggregation.

The precipitation data were obtained by scaling the Gridded estimates of daily and monthly areal rainfall (CEH-GEAR) daily rainfall estimates [2,3] to the units required for JULES input. Other variables were interpolated from coarser resolution datasets, taking into account topographic information.

[1] Best, M. J., Pryor, M., Clark, D. B., Rooney, G. G., Essery, R. L. H., Ménard, C. B., Edwards, J. M., Hendry, M. A., Porson, A., Gedney, N., Mercado, L. M., Sitch, S., Blyth, E., Boucher, O., Cox, P. M., Grimmond, C. S. B., and Harding, R. J.: The Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES), model description - Part 1: Energy and water fluxes, Geoscientific Model Development, 4, 677-699, doi:10.5194/gmd-4-677-2011, 2011.
[2] Tanguy, M., Dixon, H., Prosdocimi, I., Morris, D. G., Keller, V. D. J. (2014). Gridded estimates of daily and monthly areal rainfall for the United Kingdom (1890-2012) [CEH-GEAR]. NERC-Environmental Information Data Centre doi:10.5285/5dc179dc-f692-49ba-9326-a6893a503f6e
[3] Keller,V. D. J., Tanguy, M. , Prosdocimi, I. , Terry, J. A. , Hitt, O., Cole, S. J. , Fry, M., Morris, D. G., Dixon, H. (2015) CEH-GEAR: 1km resolution daily and monthly areal rainfall estimates for the UK for hydrological use. Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., 8, 83-112, www.earth-syst-sci-data-discuss.net/8/83/2015/ doi:10.5194/essdd-8-83-2015.

Publication date: 2015-11-13

Format

netCDF

Where/When

Study area
Temporal extent: 1961-01-01 to 2012-12-31

Provenance & quality

The precipitation was obtained by scaling the daily rainfall estimates from the CEH-Gridded Estimates of Areal Rainfall (CEH-GEAR) dataset [1,2] to units of kg m-2 s-1. The Met Office Rainfall Evaporation Calculation System (MORECS) [3,4] air temperature and vapour pressure, and hours of bright sunshine were interpolated to 1km resolution, then corrected for the local topography using the Integrated Hydrological Digital Terrain Model (IHDTM) [5] to find the CHESS-met air temperature (K), specific humidity (kg kg-1) and downward long- and shortwave radiation (W m-2). The wind speed (m s-1) was found by interpolating the MORECS wind speed, then correcting for topography using the UK Energy Technology Support Unit (ETSU) average wind speed dataset [6,7]. The daily temperature range (K) was reprojected from the CRU TS 3.21 monthly data [8,9]. The air pressure (Pa) was found by calculating a climatology of the WATCH Forcing Data (WFD) air pressure [10], then correcting for topography using the IHDTM. The data were created using software developed in Fortran 95 and python.

[1] Tanguy, M., Dixon, H., Prosdocimi, I., Morris, D. G., Keller, V. D. J. (2014). Gridded estimates of daily and monthly areal rainfall for the United Kingdom (1890-2012) [CEH-GEAR]. NERC-Environmental Information Data Centre doi:10.5285/5dc179dc-f692-49ba-9326-a6893a503f6e
[2] Keller,V. D. J., Tanguy, M. , Prosdocimi, I. , Terry, J. A. , Hitt, O., Cole, S. J. , Fry, M., Morris, D. G., Dixon, H. (2015) CEH-GEAR: 1km resolution daily and monthly areal rainfall estimates for the UK for hydrological use. Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., 8, 83-112, www.earth-syst-sci-data-discuss.net/8/83/2015/ doi:10.5194/essdd-8-83-2015.
[3] Thompson, N., Barrie, I. A., and Ayles, M.: The Meteorological Office rainfall and evaporation calculation system: MORECS, Meteorological Office, Bracknell, 1981.
[4] Hough, M. N., and Jones, R. J. A.: The United Kingdom Meteorological Office rainfall and evaporation calculation system: MORECS version 2.0-an overview, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 1, 227-239, 10.5194/hess-1-227-1997, 1997.
[5] Morris, D. G., and Flavin, R. W.: A digital terrain model for hydrology., Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling, 1, 250-262, 1990.
[6] Newton, K., and Burch, S. F.: Estimation of the UK wind energy resource using computer modelling techniques and map data, Energy Technology Support Unit, 50, 1985.
[7] Burch, S. F., and Ravenscroft, F.: Computer modelling of the UK wind energy resource: Final overview report., AEA Industrial Technology, 1992.
[8] CRU TS3.21: Climatic Research Unit (CRU) Time-Series (TS) Version 3.21 of High Resolution Gridded Data of Month-by-month Variation in Climate (Jan. 1901- Dec. 2012). 2013.
[9] Harris, I., Jones, P. D., Osborn, T. J., and Lister, D. H.: Updated high-resolution grids of monthly climatic observations - the CRU TS3.10 Dataset, International Journal of Climatology, 34, 623-642, Doi 10.1002/Joc.3711, 2014.
[10] Weedon, G. P., Gomes, S., Viterbo, P., Shuttleworth, W. J., Blyth, E., Osterle, H., Adam, J. C., Bellouin, N., Boucher, O., and Best, M.: Creation of the WATCH Forcing Data and Its Use to Assess Global and Regional Reference Crop Evaporation over Land during the Twentieth Century, Journal of Hydrometeorology, 12, 823-848, Doi 10.1175/2011jhm1369.1, 2011.

Citations

Robinson, E. L., Blyth, E. M., Clark, D. B., Finch, J., & Rudd, A. C. (2017). Trends in atmospheric evaporative demand in Great Britain using high-resolution meteorological data. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 21(2), 1189–1224. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-1189-2017

Yan, W., Hutchins, M., Loiselle, S., & Hall, C. (2016). An Informatics Approach for Smart Evaluation of Water Quality Related Ecosystem Services. Annals of Data Science, 3(3), 251–264. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40745-015-0067-3

Yan, W., Hutchins, M., Loiselle, S., & Hall, C. (2015). An Informatics Approach for Smart Evaluation of Water Quality Related Ecosystem Services. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 178–185. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24474-7_24

Jenkins, J. M., Kowalski, M., & Alvarenga, E. F. S. (2018). Predictive modelling of water losses using random forests on weather covariates. In Water Supply (Vol. 18, Issue 6, pp. 2180–2187). IWA Publishing. https://doi.org/10.2166/ws.2018.044

Supplemental information

Best, M.J., Pryor, M., Clark, D.B., Rooney, G.G., Essery, R.L.H., Ménard, C.B., Edwards, J.M., Hendry, M.A., Porson, A., Gedney, N., Mercado, L.M., Sitch, S., Blyth, E., Boucher, O., Cox, P.M., Grimmond, C.S.B., and Harding, R.J. (2011). The Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES), model description - Part 1: Energy and water fluxes, Geoscientific Model Development, 4, 677-699

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-4-677-2011

Keller,V.D.J., Tanguy, M. , Prosdocimi, I. , Terry, J.A. , Hitt, O., Cole, S.J. , Fry, M., Morris, D.G., Dixon, H. (2015) CEH-GEAR: 1km resolution daily and monthly areal rainfall estimates for the UK for hydrological use. Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., 8, 83-112

https://doi.org/10.5194/essdd-8-83-2015

CHESS Explorer

The CHESS Explorer application provides the ability for users to preview the data, visualise maps of the different meteorological variables, and understand how they vary across the country and through time.

MAJIC

MAJIC (Managing Access to Jules in the Cloud) is a web application that allows users to drive the JULES land-surface model with the CHESS-met dataset within a high performance computing environment over the web.

Correspondence/contact details

Emma Robinson

UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

Maclean Building, Benson Lane, Crowmarsh Gifford
Wallingford
Oxfordshire
OX10 8BB
UNITED KINGDOM

enquiries@ceh.ac.uk