Abstract

Data sets of spatially irregular meteorological observations interpolated to a regular grid are not only important for climate analyses but are also essential in order to derive climatologies for rainfall-runoff models which require meteorological data sets as input forcing. For example, in the European Flood Awareness System long term observed meteorological data are used to drive the hydrological model LISFLOOD to obtain long term time series of simulated discharges at a pan-European scale. Those long term time series of simulated ‘‘proxy’’ discharges can then be used for statistical analysis, e.g., to derive return periods or other time series derivatives. In this report, we present a comprehensive pan European high-resolution gridded daily data set (EFAS-Meteo) of precipitation, surface temperature (mean, minimum and maximum), wind speed, vapour pressure, calculated radiation and evapotranspiration (potential evapotranspiration, bare soil and open water evapotranspiration). The data set was created as part of the development of EFAS and has been continuously updated throughout the last year