Input data set: WATCH-WFDEI

Daily-resolution observed climate data on a global (land only) 0.5°x0.5° lat-lon grid, based on the reanalysis data sets ERA-40 (for WATCH) and ERA-Interim (for WFDEI) and using the bias correction target GPCC for monthly rainfall and snowfall sums. The data set covers the period 1901‐2012, where the data for 1901-1978 are taken from WATCH, and from 1979 onwards from WFDEI.

*Note* discontinuity in the data exists at the transition from WATCH to WFDEI, and results must be interpreted with caution.

Related Site:
http://www.waterandclimatechange.eu/about/watch-forcing-data-20th-century

When referring to this data set, the following papers should be cited:

Weedon, G.P., S.S. Gomes, P.P. Viterbo, W.J. Shuttleworth, E.E. Blyth, H.H. Österle, J.C. Adam, N.N. Bellouin, O.O. Boucher, and M.M. Best, 2011: Creation of the WATCH Forcing Data and Its Use to Assess Global and Regional Reference Crop Evaporation over Land during the Twentieth Century. J. Hydrometeor., 12, 823–848, doi: 10.1175/2011JHM1369.1

and

Weedon, G. P., G. Balsamo, N. Bellouin, S. Gomes, M. J. Best, and P. Viterbo (2014), The WFDEI meteorological forcing data set: WATCH Forcing Data methodology applied to ERA-Interim reanalysis data, Water Resour. Res., 50, 7505–7514, doi:10.1002/2014WR015638.

For ISIMIP participants, these files are available for download on the DKRZ server using the path
/work/bb0820/ISIMIP/ISIMIP2a/InputData/climate_co2/climate/HistObs/WATCH-WFDEI/

For external users, these data are made available on the ISIMIP data portal under the link shown below