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WATCH Forcing Data (WFD) - 20th Century Tair (air temperature) 1901-2001
(Tair WFD)

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By accessing or using this dataset, you agree to the terms of the relevant licence agreement(s). You will ensure that this dataset is cited in any publication that describes research in which the data have been used.

Please reference the use of the WATCH forcing data in any work published using http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2011JHM1369.1

Please note that these data are based on climate reanalysis data, plus a spatial interpolation (from one-degree to half-degree), elevation correction and monthly-correction based on gridded observations. As such the WATCH Forcing data are designed for use in modelling (e.g. hydrological modelling) and for where good meteorological observations are not readily available.

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wget --user=YOUR_USERNAME --password=YOUR_PASSWORD --auth-no-challenge https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/datastore/eidchub/2a230752-9652-412b-9feb-9f419767032d/extracted

Further information and help »

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. Tair or air temperature is the 2m air temperature (instantaneous) measured in K at 6 hourly resolution and 0.5 x 0.5 degrees spatial resolution.
Publication date: 2011-08-01
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More information

View numbers valid from 01 June 2023 Download numbers valid from 20 June 2024 (information prior to this was not collected)

Format

netCDF

Spatial information

Study area
Spatial representation type
Raster
Spatial reference system
WGS 84

Temporal information

Temporal extent
1901-01-01    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).

Licensing and constraints

Licence terms and conditions apply

Please reference the use of the WATCH forcing data in any work published using http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2011JHM1369.1

Please note that these data are based on climate reanalysis data, plus a spatial interpolation (from one-degree to half-degree), elevation correction and monthly-correction based on gridded observations. As such the WATCH Forcing data are designed for use in modelling (e.g. hydrological modelling) and for where good meteorological observations are not readily available.

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.
https://doi.org/10.1175/2011JHM1369.1

Correspondence/contact details

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

Other contacts

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

Additional metadata

Topic categories
climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere
INSPIRE themes
Atmospheric Conditions
Meteorological geographical features
Keywords
atmosphere , Atmosphere , hydrology , Hydrology , Land surface modelling , meteorology , Modelling
Last updated
21 March 2025 13:23