WATCH forcing data (WFD) - 20th century PSurf (surface pressure) 1901-2001
(PSurf WFD)
(Surface pressure WFD)
The WATCH Forcing data is a twentieth century meteorological forcing dataset for land surface and hydrological models. It consists of three/six-hourly states of the weather for global half-degree land grid points. It was generated as part of the EU FP 6 project "WATCH" (WATer and global CHange") which ran from 2007-2011. The data was generated in 2 tranches with slightly different methodology: 1901-1957 and 1958-2001, but generally the dataset can be considered as continuous. More details regarding the generation process can be found in the associated WATCH technical report and paper in J. Hydrometeorology. To understand how the data grid is formed it is necessary to read the attached WFD-land-long-lat-z files either in NetCDF or DAT formats. The data covers land points only and excludes the Antarctica. PSurf or surface pressure is the surface pressure (instantaneous) measured in Pa at 6 hourly resolution and 0.5 x 0.5 degrees spatial resolution.
Publication date: 2011-08-01
View record as
Format
netCDF
Spatial information
- Study area
-
- Spatial representation type
- Raster
- Spatial reference system
- WGS 84
Temporal information
- Temporal extent
-
1911-01-01 to 2001-12-31
Provenance & quality
These data were created as part of the EU FP6 project WATCH which was coordinated by NERC-CEH and ran from 2007-2011. The data were generated in two tranches according to time interval. The data from 1958-2001 were based on ECMWF (European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting) "ERA-40" reanalysis data via interpolation, elevation correction and monthly bias correction from gridded observations. The data from 1901-1957 were created via re-ordering of the ERA-40 reanalysis one year at a time. For full details of the process see the WATCH technical report No 22 and Weedon (2011, J. Hydrometeorology).
Related
This dataset is included in the following collections
WATer and global CHange (WATCH) Forcing Data (WFD) - 20th Century
Supplemental information
Weedon, G.P.; Gomes, S.; Viterbo, P.; Shuttleworth, W.J.; Blyth, E.; Osterle, H.; Adam, J.C.; Bellouin, N.; Boucher, O.; Best, M.. 2011 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 (5). 823-848.
Correspondence/contact details
Dr. Tanya Warnaars
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Maclean Building, Benson Lane, Crowmarsh Gifford
Wallingford
Oxfordshire
OX10 8BB
UNITED KINGDOM
enquiries@ceh.ac.uk
Wallingford
Oxfordshire
OX10 8BB
UNITED KINGDOM
Other contacts
- Custodian
-
NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centreinfo@eidc.ac.uk
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