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Tanguy, M.; Fry, M.; Svensson, C.; Hannaford, J.

Historic Standardised Precipitation Index time series for IHU Hydrometric Areas (1862-2015)

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THIS DATASET HAS BEEN SUPERSEDED The latest version is Historic Standardised Precipitation Index time series for IHU Hydrometric Areas (1862-2015) v2

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

https://doi.org/10.5285/d8655cc9-b275-4e77-9e6c-1b16eee5c7d5
Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) data for Integrated Hydrological Units (IHU) Hydrometric Areas (Kral et al. [1]). SPI is a drought index based on the probability of precipitation for a given accumulation period as defined by McKee et al. [2]. SPI is calculated for different accumulation periods: 1, 3, 6, 12, 18, 24 months. Each of these is in turn calculated for each of the twelve calendar months. Note that values in monthly (and for longer accumulation periods also annual) time series of the data therefore are likely to be autocorrelated. The standard period which was used to fit the gamma distribution is 1961-2010. The dataset covers the period from 1862 to 2015. NOTE: the difference between this dataset with the previously published dataset 'Standardised Precipitation Index time series for IHU hydrometric areas (1961-2012)' [SPI_IHU_HA] (Tanguy et al., 2015 [3]), apart from the temporal extent, is the underlying rainfall data from which SPI was calculated. In the previously published dataset, CEH-GEAR (Keller et al., 2015 [4], Tanguy et al., 2014 [5]) was used, whereas in this new version, Met Office 5km rainfall grids were used (see supporting documentation for more details). Within Historic Droughts project (grant number: NE/L01016X/1), the Met Office has digitised historic rainfall and temperature data to produce high quality historic rainfall and temperature grids, which motivated the change in the underlying data to calculate SPI. The methodology to calculate SPI is the same in the two datasets.

[1] Kral, F., Fry, M., Dixon, H. (2015). Integrated Hydrological Units of the United Kingdom: Hydrometric Areas without Coastline. NERC-Environmental Information Data Centre https://doi.org/10.5285/3a4e94fc-4c68-47eb-a217-adee2a6b02b3

[2] McKee, T. B., Doesken, N. J., Kleist, J. (1993). The Relationship of Drought Frequency and Duration to Time Scales. Eighth Conference on Applied Climatology, 17-22 January 1993, Anaheim, California.

[3] Tanguy, M.; Kral., F.; Fry, M.; Svensson, C.; Hannaford, J. (2015). Standardised Precipitation Index time series for Integrated Hydrological Units Hydrometric Areas (1961-2012). NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/5e1792a0-ae95-4e77-bccd-2fb456112cc1

[4] Keller, V. D. J., Tanguy, M., Prosdocimi, I., Terry, J. A., Hitt, O., Cole, S. J., Fry, M., Morris, D. G., and Dixon, H.: CEH-GEAR: 1 km 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, 2015.

[5] 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. https://doi.org/10.5285/5dc179dc-f692-49ba-9326-a6893a503f6e
Publication date: 2017-02-23
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More information

View numbers valid from 01 June 2023 (information prior to this was not collected)

Format

Comma-separated values (CSV)

Spatial information

Study area
Spatial representation type
Tabular (text)
Spatial reference system
OSGB 1936 / British National Grid

Temporal information

Temporal extent
1862-01-01    to    2015-12-31

Provenance & quality

SPI is calculated as originally defined in McKee et al. [1]. SPI is based on the cumulative probability of a given rainfall amount occurring at a location. The historic rainfall data of the station is fitted to a statistical distribution. For this dataset, the statistical distribution used is the gamma distribution, which has been extensively used and is recommended as a default choice for Europe by Stagge et al. [2]. The L-moments method was used to estimate the gamma distribution parameters, as the maximum likehood method was failing to fit a realistic distribution in some isolated cases (more details on the choice of methodology in Tanguy et al. [3]). To calculate SPI, the R package SCI was used (Gudmundsson & Stagge [4]), but modified to use L-moments (instead of Maximum Likelihood). The input data used is the monthly rainfall grids from the Met Office 5km gridded rainfall product provided within Historic Droughts project (grant number: NE/L01016X/1), which has been area-averaged over each of the Integrated Hydrological Units (IHU) Hydrometric Areas (Kral et al. [5]). [1] McKee, T. B., Doesken, N. J., Kleist, J. (1993). The Relationship of Drought Frequency and Duration to Time Scales. Eighth Conference on Applied Climatology, 17-22 January 1993, Anaheim, California. [2] Stagge, J. H., Tallaksen, L. M., Gudmundsson, L., Van Loon, A. F. and Stahl, K. (2015), Candidate Distributions for Climatological Drought Indices (SPI and SPEI). Int. J. Climatol. doi: 10.1002/joc.4267 [3] Tanguy et al. (2015), in preparation. [4] Gudmundsson, L. & Stagge, J. H. (2014). Package 'SCI': Standardized Climate Indices such as SPI, SRI or SPEI. Repository CRAN, http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/SCI/SCI.pdf [5] Kral, F., Fry, M., Dixon, H. (2015). Integrated Hydrological Units of the United Kingdom: Hydrometric Areas without Coastline. NERC-Environmental Information Data Centre doi:10.5285/3a4e94fc-4c68-47eb-a217-adee2a6b02b3

Licensing and constraints

THIS DATASET HAS BEEN SUPERSEDED The latest version is Historic Standardised Precipitation Index time series for IHU Hydrometric Areas (1862-2015) v2

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

Licence terms and conditions apply

Cite this dataset as:
Tanguy, M.; Fry, M.; Svensson, C.; Hannaford, J. (2017). Historic Standardised Precipitation Index time series for IHU Hydrometric Areas (1862-2015). NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/d8655cc9-b275-4e77-9e6c-1b16eee5c7d5

Correspondence/contact details

Maliko Tanguy
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Maclean Building, Benson Lane, Crowmarsh Gifford
Wallingford
Oxfordshire
OX10 8BB
UNITED KINGDOM
 enquiries@ceh.ac.uk

Authors

Tanguy, M.
Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Fry, M.
Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Svensson, C.
Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Hannaford, J.
Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

Other contacts

Custodian
NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre
 enquiries@ceh.ac.uk
Publisher
NERC Environmental Information Data Centre
 info@eidc.ac.uk

Additional metadata

Topic categories
climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere
INSPIRE theme
Meteorological geographical features
Keywords
Climate and climate change , drought indicator , Hydrology , Integrated Hydrological Units , rainfall extremes , SPI
Funding
Natural Environment Research Council Award: NE/L01016X/1
Last updated
12 August 2024 15:22