About WATCH Outreach
WATCH was funded under the European Union’s Sixth Framework Programme and ran from
1st February 2007 to 31st July 2011
The WATCH Forcing Data is a single data set of climate variables that covers the period 1901 – 2001. It has been produced by combining the Climatic Research Unit’s monthly observations of temperature, “wet days” and cloud cover, plus the GPCCv4 monthly precipitation observations, and the ERA40 reanalysis products (with the addition of corrections for seasonal – and decadal – varying atmospheric aerosols needed to adjust the solar radiation components).
The WATCH Driving Data covers the period 2001 – 2100 and has been generated using three well-established climate models that have been downscaled and bias corrected. Each model was run for two different IPCC scenarios, giving six data subsets within the driving data.
All of the forcing and driving data sets cover the land surface of the Earth (excluding Antarctica) on a 0.5 degree x 0.5 degree (~ 50km x 50km) grid. This gives 67,420 data points. Each data set provides eight variables. These are –
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air temperature at 2m above ground;
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surface pressure at 10m above ground;
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specific humidity at 2m above ground;
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wind speed at 10m above ground;
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downwards long-
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downwards short-
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rainfall;
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snowfall.
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The first five variables are provided at 6-hourly intervals, the remaining three variables are provided at 3-hourly intervals. The WATCH Forcing Data and WATCH Driving Data are freely available.
For further details visit www.eu-watch.org/