European meteorological data: contribution to research, development, and policy support

Abstract

The Joint Research Centre of the European Commission has developed Interpolated Meteorological Datasets available on a regular 25x25km grid both to the scientific community and the general public. Among others, the Interpolated Meteorological Datasets include daily maximum/minimum temperature, cumulated daily precipitation, evapotranspiration and wind speed. These datasets can be accessed through a web interface after a simple registration procedure. The Interpolated Meteorological Datasets also serve the Crop Growth Monitoring System (CGMS) at European level. The temporal coverage of the datasets is more than 30 years and the spatial coverage includes EU Member States, neighboring European countries, and the Mediterranean countries. The meteorological data are highly relevant for the development, implementation and assessment of a number of European Union (EU) policy areas: agriculture, soil protection, environment, agriculture, food security, energy, climate change.An online user survey has been carried out in order to assess the impact of the Interpolated Meteorological Datasets on research developments. More than 70% of the users have used the meteorological datasets for research purposes and more than 50% of the users have used those sources as main input for their models. The usefulness of the data scored more than 70% and it is interesting to note that around 25% of the users have published their scientific outputs based on the Interpolated Meteorological Datasets. Finally, the user feedback focuses mostly on improving the data distribution process as well as the visibility of the web platform.

Observed Northward Migration of Agro‐Climate Zones in Europe Will Further Accelerate Under Climate Change

“…Observed daily minimum and maximum air temperatures were obtained from the MARS Crop Yield Forecasting System (MCYFS) database, established and maintained by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission for the purpose of crop growth monitoring and forecasting (Biavetti et al, 2014). In short, daily meteorological data are obtained from around 4,200 weather stations, quality controlled, gap-filled, and interpolated into a regular 25 × 25 km grid over Europe and neighboring countries.…”

The influence of landscape composition and configuration on crop yield resilience

“…Because the way in which these interact to influence crop yields is complex, we condensed them into a single metric of potential yield. We modelled potential yield from observed, gridded data on temperature, precipitation and solar radiation (Agri4Cast JRC-MarsMet data; Biavetti, Karetsos, Ceglar, Toreti, & Panagos, 2014;Toreti et al, 2019) and soil water holding F I G U R E 1 Schematic showing derivation of metrics of resilience from an example time series. (a) Relative yield, the average difference between hectad and national average yields across the time series.…”

Adaptation and sustainability of water management for rice agriculture in temperate regions: The Italian case‐study

“…These two periods are further investigated with the observed meteorological data retrieved from the EC‐JRC MarsMet Archive (Biavetti et al, ) and available at http://agri4cast.jrc.ec.europa.eu/. Climate indicators are computed with the meteorological data over rice paddy fields, aggregated at the province level, and related to yield data for Piedmont and Lombardy provided by Ente Nazionale Risi.…”