Historic Gridded Standardised Precipitation Index for the United Kingdom 1862-2015 (generated using gamma distribution with standard period 1961-2010) v2

THIS DATASET HAS BEEN SUPERSEDED The latest version is Historic Gridded Standardised Precipitation Index for the United Kingdom 1862-2015 (generated using gamma distribution with standard period 1961-2010) v4

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

Supporting docs Cite this dataset

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

https://doi.org/10.5285/1b228b42-42f8-4aee-b964-2c92a21d5556

5km gridded Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) data for Great Britain, which is a drought index based on the probability of precipitation for a given accumulation period as defined by McKee et al. [1]. SPI is calculated for different accumulation periods: 1, 3, 6, 9, 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.

This release supersedes the previous version, doi:10.5285/ed7444fc-8c2a-473e-98cd-e68d3cffa2b0, as it addresses localised issues with the source data (Met Office monthly rainfall grids) for the period 1960 to 2000.

NOTE: the difference between this dataset with the previously published dataset 'Gridded Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) using gamma distribution with standard period 1961-2010 for Great Britain [SPIgamma61-10]" (Tanguy et al., 2015 [2]), apart from the temporal and spatial extent, is the underlying rainfall data from which SPI was calculated. In the previously published dataset, CEH-GEAR (Keller et al., 2015 [3], Tanguy et al., 2014 [4]) was used, whereas in this new version, Met Office 5km rainfall grids were used (see supporting information for more details). The methodology to calculate SPI is the same in the two datasets.

[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] Tanguy, M.; Hannaford, J.; Barker, L.; Svensson, C.; Kral, F.; Fry, M. (2015). Gridded Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) using gamma distribution with standard period 1961-2010 for Great Britain [SPIgamma61-10]. NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/94c9eaa3-a178-4de4-8905-dbfab03b69a0
[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: 1 km resolution daily and monthly areal rainfall estimates for the UK for hydrological use. Copernicus GmbH. https://doi.org/10.5194/essdd-8-83-2015
[4] 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: 2017-07-14

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

Format

netCDF

Spatial information

Study area

Spatial representation type

Raster

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 [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 [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. To calculate SPI, the R package SCI was used [3], 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. In this version of the dataset (version 2), the monthly rainfall grids from 1960 to 2000 was derived from the Met Office 5-km daily rainfall grids, to address some localised issues that were found in the Met Office monthly rainfall grids.

[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] 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

Licensing and constraints

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 Gridded Standardised Precipitation Index for the United Kingdom 1862-2015 (generated using gamma distribution with standard period 1961-2010) v2. NERC Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/1b228b42-42f8-4aee-b964-2c92a21d5556

BibTeX RIS

Citations

West, H., Quinn, N., & Horswell, M. (2021). Monthly Rainfall Signatures of the North Atlantic Oscillation and East Atlantic Pattern in Great Britain. In Atmosphere (Vol. 12, Issue 11, p. 1533). MDPI AG. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12111533

Supplemental information

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: 1 km resolution daily and monthly areal rainfall estimates for the UK for hydrological use. Copernicus GmbH.

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

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.