ClimateEU, scale-free climate normals, historical time series, and future projections for Europe

Abstract

Interpolated climate data have become essential for regional or local climate change impact assessments and the development of climate change adaptation strategies. Here, we contribute an accessible, comprehensive database of interpolated climate data for Europe that includes monthly, annual, decadal, and 30-year normal climate data for the last 119 years (1901 to 2019) as well as multi-model CMIP5 climate change projections for the 21st century. The database also includes variables relevant for ecological research and infrastructure planning, comprising more than 20,000 climate grids that can be queried with a provided ClimateEU software package. In addition, 1 km and 2.5 km resolution gridded data generated by the software are available for download. The quality of ClimateEU estimates was evaluated against weather station data for a representative subset of climate variables. Dynamic environmental lapse rate algorithms employed by the software to generate scale-free climate variables for specific locations lead to improvements of 10 to 50% in accuracy compared to gridded data. We conclude with a discussion of applications and limitations of this database.

Probabilistic Provenance Detection and Management Pathways for Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco in Italy Using Climatic Analogues

“…This trend was also observed when future scenarios were generated with more southern ecological groups being selected and coming from California. Further, in this case, the elevation effect was found reflecting the current knowledge on climatic gradients [ 33 , 34 , 35 ]. However, we are also aware that our results include some degree of generalization; Italy is characterized by a great range of different site conditions of forest areas, with quick change in a limited spatial extent.…”

“…While its primary data can be safely used at the global level, its native spatial resolution (0.5°, ~50 km at the equator) is too coarse to be reliable enough in regional studies. In order to improve the quality of CRU surfaces, two standalone software packages were used to generate downscaled climatic data for the native and the introduction range: ClimateNA [ 61 , 62 ] and ClimateEU [ 34 ]. ClimateNA and ClimateEU are two twin programs able to extract and downscale many climatic variables to scale-free point data for the 1901–2019 period.…”

Surprising Drought Tolerance of Fir (Abies) Species between Past Climatic Adaptation and Future Projections Reveals New Chances for Adaptive Forest Management

“…Data for past climates were obtained from two databases. For the Euro-Mediterranean locations, the recently published database ClimateEU (version 4.80) [43] was utilized. It contains historic climate data for Europe using 15 global climate models, for a representative set of climate variables, for the last 120 years (1901 to 2019) as well as multi-model CMIP5 climate change projections for the 21st century.…”

Variability of Morphological Traits of European Beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) Seedlings in Serbia

“…The inputs for the correlation coefficient were the arithmetic means of the populations for the analyzed morphological traits and different climatic variables connected with their original stands. Interpolated climate data for the reference period 1961-2009 generated by the ClimateEU software (Marchi et al 2020) were used to characterize the long-term climatic conditions of the original stands. A detailed explanation of the assessment of all available climate variables provided by the ClimateEU software can be found in Wang et al (2012).…”