Downloading the data#
All data files used in the lecture are available on the QCR webserver.
Links and info to be added here as the course unfolds.
ERA5 data (global)#
Ready to use, global low resolution NetCDF files#
ERA5 is an atmospheric reanalysis product. Note that you can download the data yourself (I provide some sample scripts below), but for a start you can download some files I prepared for you:
Invariant (2D) data:
Monthly surface (3D) data:
ERA5_LowRes_Monthly_t2m.nc: 2m temperature
ERA5_LowRes_Monthly_tp.nc: total precipitation
ERA5_LowRes_Monthly_pet.nc: potential evapotranspiration
File naming conventions:
LowResmeans that I asked for a lower spatial resolution than available (0.75° instead of the 0.25° default).Monthlymeans that I averaged the data to calendar monthsMonthlyAvgmeans that I averaged the data to all months (annual cycle)4Dmeans that the data is also available on pressure levelst2mortpare variable namesInvariantmeans that this file contains time invariant fields such as topography or land-sea mask.
Additional ERA5 data from the CDS servers (optional)#
You may want to download ERA5 data yourself if:
you’d like additional variables not listed above
you’d like to use high resolution data (0.25°) instead of the low resolution (0.75°) that I provided
you’d like to download hourly or daily data instead of monthly data
If you want to go this path (optional), you’ll need an account at the Copernicus Data Store
You may want to use their online platform to analyze/download the data, or you can use a script.
Here are a few example scripts to get you started:
script I used to download all the data listed above: download_era5.ipynb
script I used to download the “ultra low res” data listed in the CMIP6 section - the only change is the grid resolution: download_era5_lr.ipynb
script I used to download the high resolution data (0.25°) over West Africa: download_era5_hr_wa.ipynb
Timeseries data#
Weather station data#
The “Global Surface Summary of the Day” database is managed by NOAA. It contains daily weather station data from all over the world. These data are open access by the way! You can download them yourself from the page linked above.
I downloaded the data for the Heathrow weather station near London and provide it here:
I also downloaded Bristol and Cardiff data if you are interested:
Since we can’t trust the current US adminstration to keep this infrastructure running for the duration of the class, I mirred the GSOD readme on our server - you’ll find it here.
Daily precipitation and streamflow from the national river flow archive#
The national river flow archive is a great resource for hydrologist. I downloaded the daily streamflow and precipitation data (search tool) for the Chew river near Bristol (station 53004) and provide it here:
Chew at Compton Dando - Gauged Daily Flow (gdf): 53004_gdf.csv
Chew at Compton Dando - Catchment daily rainfall (cdr): 53004_cdr.csv
Documentation:
Data for Workshop 04’s assignment (future climate at Heathrow)#
For this workshop, we will use the following timeseries at Heathrow airport:
The content of these files is explained in the assignment.
Daily timeseries from ISIMIP#
ISIMIP stands for the “Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project”. I downloaded global daily data for the years 1979-2019 (W5E5) and for 1850-2100 (GFDL-ESM4, MRI-ESM2, UKESM1-0LL) for the variables tas (2m temperature), pr (precipitation), tasmax (max temperature), tasmin (min temperature), and hurs (relative humidity). This alltogether represents a bit more than 1.6TB of data globally. Therefore, I extracted a number of timeseries for you to download. Let me know if you need more locations, or perhaps a specific region!.
The timeseries are available for a number of locations, together with ERA5 daily data for precipitation and temperature. Visit the following webpage to explore them all:
If you feel ambitious and want to download global datasets, they are available here:
Note also that the ISIMIP data download portal is very good and relatively intuitive to use: data.isimip.org.
Monthly CMIP6 data (global)#
CMIP6 stands for the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6. It is a large collection of climate model simulations from many different models and institutions that formed the basis of IPCC AR6. The data is stored on the ESGF (Earth System Grid Federation) servers. Here I provide a subset of the data on my webserver for you to download.
The data below is regridded to a common grid (2° and 0.75°) and averaged to monthly values.
Regridded to 2° resolution#
At 2° resolution, all CMIP6 temperature and precipitation files represent 9.2GB of data. With the addition of PET and SPEI, the total is 28GB.
Projections#
This is the list of Earth System Models (ESMs), sometimes still called Global Circulation Models (GCMs) and scenarios for which I provide temperature data. The data is regridded to a common 2° grid and averaged to monthly values:
Monthly temperature at 2° resolution
Monthly precipitation at 2° resolution
Monthly PET at 2° resolution
Monthly SPEI at 2° resolution
If you want to avoid having to click on all files and want to download all files at once, you can use wget. After downloading the list of files provided below, you can use the following command to download all files at once:
wget -i cmip6-tas-list-2deg.txt
list of temperature files: cmip6-tas-list-2deg.txt
list of precipitation files: cmip6-pr-list-2deg.txt
list of PET files: cmip6-pet-list-2deg.txt
list of SPEI files: cmip6-spei-list-2deg.txt
2° resolution ERA5 data#
This is the same ERA5 data as you’ve used so far, but at an even lower resolution of 2°. I’ve coarsened the data even more to match the CMIP6 data available above:
ERA5_UltraLowRes_Invariant.nc: invariant data at 2° resolution
ERA5_UltraLowRes_Monthly_t2m.nc: 2m temperature data at 2° resolution
ERA5_UltraLowRes_Monthly_tp.nc: precipitation data at 2° resolution
ERA5_UltraLowRes_Monthly_pet.nc: potential evapotranspiration data at 2° resolution
ERA5_UltraLowRes_Monthly_spei.nc: SPEI data at 2° resolution
Regridded to 0.75° resolution#
At 0.75° resolution, all CMIP6 temperature and precipitation files represent 65GB of data. With the addition of PET and SPEI, the total is 193GB.
Projections#
The data is regridded to a common 0.75° grid and averaged to monthly values:
Monthly temperature at 0.75° resolution
Monthly precipitation at 0.75° resolution
Monthly PET at 0.75° resolution
Monthly SPEI at 0.75° resolution
If you want to avoid having to click on all files and want to download all files at once, you can use wget. After downloading the list of files provided below, you can use the following command to download all files at once:
wget -i cmip6-tas-list-075deg.txt
list of temperature files: cmip6-tas-list-075deg.txt
list of precipitation files: cmip6-pr-list-075deg.txt
list of PET files: cmip6-pet-list-075deg.txt
list of SPEI files: cmip6-spei-list-075deg.txt
0.75° resolution ERA5 data#
See ERA5 data (global).
CMIP6 data at their original resolution#
See this server for the original resolution files: OGGM server.
Glacier data#
For Workshop 06, we will use data from the OGGM standard projections. We will use the data organised in river basins, which is a bit more hidden than the globally aggregated files.
All 75 river basins (see workshop 06, lesson 02) are available in a single folder: https://cluster.klima.uni-bremen.de/~fmaussion/teaching/qcr/glaciers/projections_per_basin/. Basins are numbered, and I recommend to download the tar file for the basin you are interested in. These folders contain projection data for the scenarios ssp126 and ssp585.
For workshop 06 Lesson 01, you will need:
glacier projections for the Rhone basin (id 6243), a netCDF file: 6243.tar.gz
For workshop 06 Lesson 02, you will need:
statistics for all glaciers in the world (a csv file): rgi60_stats.csv
the river basins outlines (a shapefile): glacier_basins.zip
For workshop 06’s Assignment, you will also need:
glacier projections for the Aral Sea catchment (id 2902), a netCDF file: 2902.tar.gz
Flood workshop data#
For the flood workshop, we prepared a set of dataset for you to download. The data is available in a single zip file, on Sharepoint (access for UoB students only):
Download the file and extract it in the data folder of your repository. The content of the zip file is explained in the assignment.