What data do we require for extremes analysisand what is available?

(an intro to the BOG on data)

Albert Klein TankKNMI, The Netherlands

Warning:

no attempt to becomprehensive;

bias towardsland-atmosphere;

bias towards Europe

Outline

• Russian heat wave (yes, one more time)

• GCOS IP-2010

• Data Policy white paper from the Exeter workshop oncreating surface temperature datasets

• Other relevant initiatives

• Further issues for BOG discussion

Example: Russian heat waveJuly 2010

Courtesy John Christy (top), Adrian Simmons (bottom)

Example: Russian heat waveJuly 2010

Enough data forstatistical modelling,event attribution, or

studying physicalprocesses,

but…

Example: Russian heat waveJuly 2010

31 days with Tx>25°C; normal is 9.5 days

Data available from http://eca.knmi.nl

Example: Russian heat waveJuly 2010

16 nights with Tn>20°C; normal is 0.5 night

Data available from http://eca.knmi.nl

Example: Russian heat waveJuly 2010

16 nights with Tn>20°C; normal is 0.5 night

Data available from http://eca.knmi.nl

Example: Russian heat waveJuly 2010

No significant trend at Moscow

Daily griddedproduct (E-OBS)

• Based on station records

• Daily fields

• 1950 – now

• 0.25 deg resolution

• Matching RCM grids

• Associated error fieldsexist, but rarely used!

Haylock et al., J. Geophys. Res., 2008; data available from http://eca.knmi.nl

Daily griddedproduct (E-OBS)

• Based on station records

• Daily fields

• 1950 – now

• 0.25 deg resolution

• Matching RCM grids

• Associated error fieldsexist, but rarely used!

Haylock et al., J. Geophys. Res., 2008; data available from http://eca.knmi.nl

…but interpolation leads to reduction of extremes

temperature

precipitation

Traceability

• About 60% is“public”, i.e.available fromthe ECA&Dwebsite

• For the otherstations, onlythe metadataand derivedproducts canbe released

Data available from http://eca.knmi.nl

GCOS IP-10

GCOS IP-10

• Observations are required for:informed decisions on prevention, mitigation, and adaptation strategies; to support research; to initialise predictions; to develop the models; to assess social and economic vulnerabilities

• Observations are essential public goods:benefits of global availability of data exceed any economic or strategic value to individual countries from withholding national data

• Observations underpin all efforts by Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to mitigate, and adapt to, climate change

Some GCOS IP-10 issues

• Increasing need for local, high-frequency surface atmospheric data on climate to characterise extremes

• Satellite remote-sensing systems become more important, but surface-based and airborne in situ and remote-sensing systems will always remain essential

• Metadata (i.e., information on where and how the observations are taken) are absolutely essential

• Limited progress in developing countries, and support for capacity-building is small in relation to needs

• Flow of data to the user community and to the international data centres is inadequate

• Parties should produce national plans on their climate observing system

Exeter workshop

Exeter workshop

• Several white papers, e.g. on Data Policy:

• Gap exists between theory (including GCOS and GEO requirements) and practice

• Partly due to data policy, but not alone

• Also lack of engagement, lack of resources, and inadequate data-system infrastructures

• Data policy issues are persistent and unlikely to go away in the near future

See: http://www.surfacetemperatures.org

Exeter workshop

• Some recommendations:

• Accept trade off between traceability and data completeness

• Acknowledge that involvement of data providers from countries throughout the world is essential

• Involves more than simply sending the data to an international data centre

• Scientific community to deliver information to support local climate services (= return of investment important in particularly for developing countries)

• Support digitization of paper archives

Other relevant initiatives

• Global:– coordinated inter-callibration (GSICS) and reprocessing (SCOPE-

CM) of satellite data– ICOADS version 3 released (almost)– several reanalyses datasets released (MERRA, CFSR, JRA)– 20th Century reanalysis (based on surface pressure data only)– new global reanalysis project by ECMWF (ERACLIM) with much

attention for improving reanalysis data input– new project (CLIMDEX) for updating the global dataset of

extremes indices and developing global daily gridded datasets (building on GHCN-Daily)

Other relevant initiatives

• Regional:– regional reanalysis for North America (NARR)

and Europe (http://www.euro4m.eu )– daily station collections (+ daily gridded datasets) for Asia

(APHRODITE) and South America (CLARIS-LPB)– several new national high resolution datasets

More in:

WOAP4 Meeting ReportHamburg, Germany

March 2010

GCOS Publication No. 142

Index for heavy falls

Alexander et al., JGR, 2006; also in IPCC-AR4

What about theblank regionsin the map?

ETCCDI Regional Workshops(complemented by APN)

Peterson and Manton, BAMS, 2008

• Organised by the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI)

• ETCCDI is a group of scientists jointly sponsored by several international agencies (WMO-CCl/WCRP-CLIVAR/JCOMM)

• Environment Canada provides, maintains, and further develops the R-based workshop software (freely available from http://cccma.seos.uvic.ca/ETCCDI)

Regional workshops

ETCCDI Regional Workshops(complemented by APN)

Working together

GH Africa Workshop(WCRP/World Bank)

04/2010

Indonesia, Malaysia,Thailand, Philippines

(NL) 12/2009

Southeast Asia (USA)

12/2007

Mexico (UK)03/2009

West IndianOcean (France)

09/2009

Central Africa (USA) 4/2007

Peterson and Manton, BAMS, 2008

Regional workshops:

successful concept,…

…but often no access tooriginal data!

Further issues for BOG (1 of 2)

• Tension between traceability (access to the primary sources)and data completeness (use whatever available)

• Need high density, high frequency, sharing, and long records

• Adaptive strategies for dealing with extreme events place even higher demands on observations

• Datasets need continuous work, both for updating and improving quality/homogeneity

• Including scientist developing datasets in research projects is a good idea, e.g. in CMIP5 climate model evaluation

• Met Services are not keen if their only role is providing data; application relevant products are a necessary return of investment

Further issues for BOG (2 of 2)

• Need to close the gap between rapid IT developments and actually implementing modern distributed database management systems

• Reprocessing of data and reanalysis important

• Some (satellite) datasets are becoming so large that it is difficult for many users to acquire them

• Users ask for products that meet their requirements, often through integration of data from different sources (in situ, satellite, reanalysis)

• Work needs to comply with WMO/GCOS/GEO ideas on systems/standards, but in the end the actual delivered datasets count rather than nice words

mailto: Albert.Klein.Tank @ KNMI.nl