Near surface meteorological variables from 1979 to present derived from bias-corrected reanalysis

This dataset provides bias-corrected reconstruction of near-surface meteorological variables derived from the fifth generation of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) atmospheric reanalyses (ERA5). It is intended to be used as a meteorological forcing dataset for land surface and hydrological models.
The dataset has been obtained using the same methodology used to derive the widely used water, energy and climate change (WATCH) forcing data, and is thus also referred to as WATCH Forcing Data methodology applied to ERA5 (WFDE5). The data are derived from the ERA5 reanalysis product that have been re-gridded to a half-degree resolution. Data have been adjusted using an elevation correction and monthly-scale bias corrections based on Climatic Research Unit (CRU) data (for temperature, diurnal temperature range, cloud-cover, wet days number and precipitation fields) and Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) data (for precipitation fields only). Additional corrections are included for varying atmospheric aerosol-loading and separate precipitation gauge observations. For full details please refer to the product user-guide.
Because WFDE5 is defined over land only, users needing spatially continuous forcing over both land and ocean can use the companion dataset W5E5. W5E5 combines WFDE5 over land with ERA5 over the ocean, providing globally complete daily data on a common 0.5° grid. For variables included in WFDE5, W5E5 land values are derived as daily means from the corresponding hourly WFDE5 fields, while ocean values are obtained from ERA5 by temporal aggregation from hourly to daily resolution and spatial aggregation from 0.25° to 0.5° resolution.
This dataset was produced on behalf of Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).