Identification

Title

WATer and global CHange (WATCH) Forcing Data (WFD) - 20th Century

Alternative title(s)

d314001

Abstract

<p>New global sub-daily meteorological forcing data are provided for use with land surface and hydrological-models. The data are derived from the ERA-40 reanalysis product via sequential interpolation to half-degree resolution, elevation correction and monthly-scale adjustments based on CRU (corrected-temperature, diurnal temperature range, cloud-cover) and GPCC (precipitation) monthly observations combined with new corrections for varying atmospheric aerosol-loading and separate precipitation gauge corrections for rainfall and snowfall. The WATCH Forcing data is a twentieth century meteorological forcing dataset for land surface and hydrological models. It consists of three of 6-hourly states of the weather for global half-degree land grid points. It was generated as part of the EU FP 6 project "WATCH" (WATer and global CHange") which ran from 2007-2011. The data was generated in 2 time periods with slightly different methodology: 1901-1957 and 1958-2001, but generally the dataset can be considered as continuous. More details regarding the generation process can be found in the associated WATCH technical report and paper in J. Hydrometeorology. The data covers land points only and excludes the Antarctica.</p>

Resource type

dataset

Resource locator

https://gdex.ucar.edu/datasets/d314001/

protocol: https

name: Dataset Description

description: Related Link

function: information

https://gdex.ucar.edu/datasets/d314001/dataaccess/

protocol: https

name: Data Access

description: Related Link

function: download

Unique resource identifier

code

codeSpace

Dataset language

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

dataset

originating controlled vocabulary

title

reference date

date type

revision

effective date

2021-03-30

Keyword set

keyword value

CLM-LSM > Common Land Model (CLM) Land Surface Model

originating controlled vocabulary

title

reference date

date type

revision

effective date

2025-10-03

Keyword set

keyword value

EARTH SCIENCE > ATMOSPHERE > ATMOSPHERIC WINDS > SURFACE WINDS

EARTH SCIENCE > ATMOSPHERE > ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR > WATER VAPOR INDICATORS > HUMIDITY

EARTH SCIENCE > ATMOSPHERE > ATMOSPHERIC RADIATION > SOLAR RADIATION

EARTH SCIENCE > ATMOSPHERE > PRECIPITATION > PRECIPITATION RATE

EARTH SCIENCE > ATMOSPHERE > ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE > SURFACE PRESSURE

EARTH SCIENCE > ATMOSPHERE > ATMOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE > SURFACE TEMPERATURE > AIR TEMPERATURE

originating controlled vocabulary

title

reference date

date type

revision

effective date

2025-10-03

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

-180.0

East bounding longitude

180.0

North bounding latitude

90.0

South bounding latitude

-90.0

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

1901-01-01T0000+00

End position

2001-12-31T2230+00

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2018-02-11

Frequency of update

notPlanned

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

organisation name

email address

datahelp@ucar.edu

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

organisation name

NSF NCAR Geoscience Data Exchange

email address

datahelp@ucar.edu

web address

https://gdex.ucar.edu

name: NSF NCAR Geoscience Data Exchange

description: The Geoscience Data Exchange (GDEX), managed by the Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL) at NSF NCAR, contains a large collection of meteorological, atmospheric composition, and oceanographic observations, and operational and reanalysis model outputs, integrated with NSF NCAR High Performance Compute services to support atmospheric and geosciences research.

function: download

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2025-10-09T01:23:20Z

Metadata language