A critical remark on the applicability of E-OBS European gridded temperature data set for validating control climate simulations

0351380 - ÚFA 2011 RIV US eng J - Journal Article
Kyselý, Jan - Plavcová, Eva
A critical remark on the applicability of E-OBS European gridded temperature data set for validating control climate simulations.
Journal of Geophysical Research. Roč. 115, - (2010), D23118/1-D23118/14. ISSN 0148-0227
R&D Projects: GA ČR GAP209/10/2265
EU Projects: European Commission(XE) 505539 - ENSEMBLES
Grant - others:EURO4M(XE) 242093
Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z30420517
Keywords : daily air temperature * interpolation * gridded data * regional climate models * control climate * Europe
Subject RIV: DG - Athmosphere Sciences, Meteorology
Impact factor: 3.303, year: 2010

The study compares daily temperatures in two data sets interpolated from irregularly spaced meteorological stations to a regular grid: the European gridded data set (E-OBS), produced from a relatively sparse network of stations available in the European Climate Assessment and Dataset (ECA&D) project, and a data set gridded onto the same grid from a high-density network of stations in the Czech Republic (GriSt). We show that large differences exist between the two gridded data sets, the errors tend to be larger in tails of the distributions. A large bias is found also for the diurnal temperature range. Comparison with simple average series from stations in two regions reveals that differences between GriSt and the station averages are minor relative to differences between E-OBS and either of the two data sets. The large deviations between the two gridded data sets affect conclusions concerning validation of temperature characteristics in regional climate model (RCM) simulations.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0191146