Friday 1 May 2020

Almost there


I've been very quiet with the updates since last summer.  Partially this is just forgetting to update the blog, but we have been making progress on the HadEX3 dataset.  

During the latter part of 2019, we played around with options for the gridded dataset.  I fine-tuned the station selection and some of the quality control scripts to ensure we have a good balance between the widest spatial coverage and the best quality of stations.  As a result, for the final grids, stations which end before 2009 are not included.  A number of sources end before then, and their absence from the network in the final decade causes apparent inhomogeneities in some regions.  The stations will still be made available where possible.

The results of these are that the released version of HadEX3 will be at a finer resolution than HadEX2, using 1.875x1.25 degrees (so x4).  The "global" trends for the land surface don't change much at all, but as our station network is denser in many regions, we can present greater spatial detail.

One thing that we have been able to do is a more detailed comparison between the trends and spatial patterns of the indices which use a reference period (e.g. TX90p, CSDI, R95p) as input data for these cannot be combined if they use different periods.  This limitation does affect the spatial coverage at the moment, but we are asking contributors to calculate indices with the other reference period where possible to make this comparison as complete and robust as we can.  This will allow any future collections of these indices to understand how different reference periods affect the absolute values and hence also long term trends.

The final bits of data came in during November in time for us to submit the paper before the end of 2019 to JGR-A. The reviews which came back earlier in 2020 were positive, but it has taken a little longer to deal with them with the changes that everyone has undergone as a result of COVID-19.  However, I'm pleased to say that we have submitted the revised manuscript back this week.  Once the peer review process has completed, I'll make the dataset publicly available.

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