Observation data rescue and data development (quality control)

Work Package 1 in UERRA is involved in data rescue of historical observations of temperatures, preciptiation but also other variables like pressure and winds. These are often observation journals on paper but may also be scanned or in some cases already digitised in national data bases that have not been transferred to international data bases yet. An Appendix (I) lists the different data bases which are targeted in UERRA and through the work of the partner leading the effort, URV in Tarragona, Catalonia, Spain. WP1 is involved also in many data rescue efforts like ACRE, ERA-CLIM2. I UERRA the efforts have concentrated on post 1950 data and on observations during different times of the day as well (in addition to daily values. Data are from several European countries but far from all due to availability or data polices.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The digitisation has progressed faster than anticipated due to more experienced staff guiding and supervising students doing the work at URV. There have been over 8.4 M data processed from about 100 stations in several European countries and some North African Mediterranean ones and Turkey. The emphasis is on post-1950 and on observations on the sub-daily time scale (often 3-5 observations per day). This has required improved quality control procedures and they have been developed. URV has carried out almost all of these whereas NMA-Romania has contributed with precipitation data from some Romanian stations. Extensive quality control has been applied both in manual and automatic ways. With feedback and supervision the error rate has been pushed down to very few % of the data. Homogenisation is then the final step before data can be disseminated. Some of the data can also be used in the ongoing reanalysis efforts in WP2 whereas others will benefit all future reanalyis efforts.

In addition, already digitised and quality controlled data from Sweden and Norway have and are being collected for combing into the data bases.