EURADCLIM: the European climatological high-resolution gauge-adjusted radar precipitation dataset

• Published in: Earth system science data Vol. 15; no. 3; pp. 1441 - 1464
• Main Authors: Overeem, Aart, van den Besselaar, Else, van der Schrier, Gerard, Meirink, Jan Fokke, van der Plas, Emiel, Leijnse, Hidde
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Katlenburg-Lindau Copernicus GmbH 31.03.2023; Copernicus Publications
• Subjects: Algorithms; Atmospheric precipitations; Climate; Climatology; Clutter; Composite materials; Daily precipitation; Datasets; Echoes; Environmental assessment; Extreme weather; Gauges; High resolution; Hydrology; Meteorological radar; Meteorological satellites; Meteorological stations, Radar; Precipitation; Precipitation (Meteorology); Precipitation estimation; Radar; Radar data; Rain; Rain gauges; Rainfall; Resolution; Satellites; Spatial discrimination; Spatial resolution; Statistical methods; Statistics; Weather; Weather forecasting; Weather radar; Europe
• ISSN: 1866-3516; 1866-3508; 1866-3516
• DOI: 10.5194/essd-15-1441-2023

The European climatological high-resolution gauge-adjusted radar precipitation dataset, EURADCLIM, addresses the need for an accurate (sub)daily precipitation product covering 78 % of Europe at a high spatial resolution. A climatological dataset of 1 and 24 h precipitation accumulations on a 2 km grid is derived for the period 2013 through 2020. The starting point is the European Meteorological Network (EUMETNET) Operational Program on the Exchange of Weather Radar Information (OPERA) gridded radar dataset of 15 min instantaneous surface rain rates, which is based on data from, on average, 138 ground-based weather radars. First, methods are applied to further remove non-meteorological echoes from these composites by applying two statistical methods and a satellite-based cloud-type mask. Second, the radar composites are merged with the European Climate Assessment & Dataset (ECA&D) with potentially ∼ 7700 rain gauges from National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) in order to substantially improve its quality. Characteristics of the radar, rain gauge and satellite datasets are presented, as well as a detailed account of the applied algorithms. The clutter-removal algorithms are effective while removing few precipitation echoes. The usefulness of EURADCLIM for quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE) is confirmed by comparison against rain gauge accumulations employing scatter density plots, statistical metrics and a spatial verification. These show a strong improvement with respect to the original OPERA product. The potential of EURADCLIM to derive pan-European precipitation climatologies and to evaluate extreme precipitation events is shown. Specific attention is given to the remaining artifacts in and limitations of EURADCLIM. Finally, it is recommended to further improve EURADCLIM by applying algorithms to 3D instead of 2D radar data and by obtaining more rain gauge data for the radar–gauge merging. The EURADCLIM 1 and 24 h precipitation datasets are publicly available at https://doi.org/10.21944/7ypj-wn68 (Overeem et al., 2022a) and https://doi.org/10.21944/1a54-gg96 (Overeem et al., 2022b).