Data from the Instituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia INGV-SXG simulations

SPECS will undertake research and dissemination activities to deliver a new generation of European climate forecast systems, with improved forecast quality and efficient regionalisation tools to produce reliable, local climate information over land at seasonal-to-decadal time scales, and provide an enhanced communication protocol and services to satisfy the climate information needs of a wide range of public and private stakeholders. A core set of common experiments has been defined, to which most forecast systems will contribute. Another set of coordinated experiments, tier 1, includes the experiments that one or more forecast systems are planning to run. A standard seasonal experimental set up will consist of ten-member ensembles, with two start dates per year (first of May and November) over the 1981-2012 period and seven-month forecast length. The standard decadal experimental set up consists in five-member ensembles, starting on the first of November (or some time close to that date) of the years 1960, 1963, 1965, 1968, 1970, 1973, 1975, 1978, 1980, 1983, 1985, 1988, 1990, 1993, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2008, 2010, 2013, with a five-year forecast length. A description of the main experiments, with the minimum contribution in terms of start dates, forecast length and ensemble size follows: 1 - Assessment of the impact of soil-moisture initial conditions (seasonal): contributing EC-Earth, IFS/NEMO (ECMWF), CNRM-CM5 (MeteoF), UM, MPI-ESM (MPG); 2 - Assessment of the impact of sea-ice initialization (interannual); contributing EC-Earth (IC3), IPSL-CM5, CNRM-CM5 (MeteoF), UM, MPI-ESM (MPG) 3 - Assessment of impact of increased horizontal resolution (seasonal and decadal); contributing CNRM-CM5 (CERFACS, decadal; MeteoF, seasonal), EC-Earth (IC3, seasonal; KNMI and SMHI, decadal), MPI-ESM (MPG, seasonal and decadal), IPSL-CM5 (decadal), UM (seasonal and decadal); 4 - Assessment of impact of an improved stratosphere (seasonal and decadal) including interannually-varying ozone; contributing EC-Earth (KNMI seasonal with ozone; SMHI decadal), IFS/NEMO (ECMWF, seasonal), CNRM-CM5 (MeteoF, seasonal), UM (seasonal, decadal); 5 - Assessment of impact of additional start dates (decadal); contributing EC-Earth (KNMI, SMHI), MPI-ESM (MPG), IPSL-CM5. SPECS research has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under SPECS project (grant agreement n° 308378).

Tropospheric ORganic CHemistry Experiment (TORCH) was a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Polluted Troposphere Research Programme project (Round 1 - NER/T/S/2002/00145. Duration 2002 - 2005) led by A. Lewis, University of York. TORCH 1 took place in July and August 2003 at Writtle College, near Chelmsford, Essex. This dataset contains ECMWF trajectories

The Convective Storm Initiation Project (CSIP) aimed to further the understanding of the mechanisms responsible for the initiation of precipitating convection in the maritime environment of southern England; i.e. to understand why convective clouds form and develop into precipitating clouds in a particular location. The project was centred on the 3 GHz (CAMRa) and 1275 clear-air (ACROBAT) radars at Chilbolton and used a number of the new UK Universities' Facility for Atmospheric Measurement (UFAM) mobile instruments. This dataset includes measurements of wind speeds and wind directions and aerosol concentrations.

Data from observations made at the The Cape Verde Atmospheric Observatory (16.848N, 24.871W) which exists to advance understanding of climatically significant interactions between the atmosphere and ocean and to provide a regional focal point and long-term data. The observatory is based on Calhau Island of São Vicente, Cape Verde in the tropical Eastern North Atlantic Ocean, a region which is data poor but plays a key role in atmosphere-ocean interactions of climate-related and biogeochemical parameters including greenhouse gases. It is an open-ocean site that is representative of a region likely to be sensitive to future climate change, and is minimally influenced by local effects and intermittent continental pollution. The dataset contains 47 mm diameter filter packs measurements from the University of New Hampshire, collected during the SOLAS-RHAMBLE intensive measurement campaign.

A sonic anemometer and a gas analyser measuring water vapour and carbon dioxide are co-located within a compound dedicated to measuring fluxes using the eddy covariance method at Chilbolton Observatory. The eddy covariance technique is an atmospheric measurement method used to calculate vertical turbulent fluxes within the atmospheric boundary layer. This is the lowest region of the troposphere and is usually well mixed, particularly during daylight hours, due to convective heating from the sun. It is this motion in the lower troposphere that makes the technique possible. In order to properly measure the turbulent properties of the atmosphere the measurements must be made at a high frequency - 20 Hz for the Chilbolton Observatory system. A sonic anemometer measures the 3 orthogonal components of the wind velocity by measuring the changes in the time of flight of sonic pulses between 3 transmitter/receiver pairs as a result of the air velocity. A gas analyser measures the absorptance of radiation along a fixed path and uses this to determine the concentration of a gas in air. For each gas the absorptance at 2 wavelengths is measured 152 times per second, one affected by that gas and the other unaffected. There are more accurate instruments available for measuring water vapour and carbon dioxide (e.g. a relative humidity sensor for water vapour) but the benefit of the gas analyser is that it has a sufficiently fast response to resolve the rapid changes in concentration as a result of turbulence.

1 km resolution rain rate data from Met Office's Cobbacombe Cross C-band rain radar, Devon, England as part of the NIMROD, very short range forecasting system used by the Met Office. 1 km rain rate data are available from 2011 until present. Radar images from the C-band (5.3 cm wavelength) radar are received by the Nimrod system 5 minute intervals respectively.

The European Arctic Stratospheric Ozone Experiment is a European Commission (EC) measurement campaign undertaken in the Northern Hemisphere winter of 1991-92 to study ozone chemistry and dynamics. This dataset contains vertical column measurements of NO2, O4, OclO, BrO, NO3 and O3.

This CD-ROM set contains the Volume 1 hydrology and soil data collection. The data covers a 24 month period, 1987-1988, and all but one are mapped to a common spatial resolution and grid (1 degree x 1 degree). Temporal resolution for most datasets is monthly; however, a few are at a finer resolution (e.g., 6-hourly). This dataset contains data covering: * Precipitation * Hydrology cover * River basin streamflow * Global soil properties

The fully Global Mean Sea-Level Pressure (GMSLP) dataset, was developed in collaboration with CSIRO (Scientific and Industrial Research for Australia), Australia and NIWA (National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research), New Zealand. It is an historical, 5 deg. x 5 deg. gridded monthly dataset covering the period 1871-1994. The Met Office Hadley Centre recently produced the HadSLP1 dataset which replaces the Global Mean Sea Level Pressure (GMSLP) data sets, and is a unique combination of monthly globally-complete fields of land and sea pressure observations a 5 degree latitude-longitude grid from 1871 to 1998.