Identification

Title

Historic Gridded Standardised Precipitation Index for the United Kingdom 1862-2015 (generated using gamma distribution with standard period 1961-2010) v4

Abstract

5km gridded Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) data for Great Britain, which is a drought index based on the probability of precipitation for a given accumulation period as defined by McKee et al [1]. There are seven accumulation periods: 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, 24 months and for each period SPI is calculated for each of the twelve calendar months. Note that values in monthly (and for longer accumulation periods also annual) time series of the data therefore are likely to be autocorrelated. The standard period which was used to fit the gamma distribution is 1961-2010. The dataset covers the period from 1862 to 2015. This version supersedes previous versions (version 2 and 3) of the same dataset due to minor errors in the data files. NOTE: the difference between this dataset with the previously published dataset "Gridded Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) using gamma distribution with standard period 1961-2010 for Great Britain [SPIgamma61-10]" (Tanguy et al., 2015; https://doi.org/10.5285/94c9eaa3-a178-4de4-8905-dbfab03b69a0) , apart from the temporal and spatial extent, is the underlying rainfall data from which SPI was calculated. In the previously published dataset, CEH-GEAR (Tanguy et al., 2014; https://doi.org/10.5285/5dc179dc-f692-49ba-9326-a6893a503f6e) was used, whereas in this new version, Met Office 5km rainfall grids were used (see supporting information for more details). The methodology to calculate SPI is the same in the two datasets. [1] McKee, T. B., Doesken, N. J., Kleist, J. (1993). The Relationship of Drought Frequency and Duration to Time Scales. Eighth Conference on Applied Climatology, 17-22 January 1993, Anaheim, California. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/233090b2-1d14-4eb9-9f9c-3923ea2350ff

Resource type

dataset

Resource locator

https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/datastore/eidchub/233090b2-1d14-4eb9-9f9c-3923ea2350ff

name: Download the data

description: Download a copy of this data

function: download

https://data-package.ceh.ac.uk/sd/233090b2-1d14-4eb9-9f9c-3923ea2350ff.zip

name: Supporting information

description: Supporting information available to assist in re-use of this dataset

function: information

Unique resource identifier

code

https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/id/233090b2-1d14-4eb9-9f9c-3923ea2350ff

codeSpace

doi:

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Meteorological geographical features

originating controlled vocabulary

title

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2008-06-01

Keyword set

keyword value

originating controlled vocabulary

title

GeoNames

reference date

date type

creation

effective date

2006-01-01

Keyword set

keyword value

Historic Droughts

Drought

Water Scarcity

Drought Inventory

Drought Catalogue

Drought Indicator

SPI

Standardised Precipitation Index

Rainfall extremes

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

-8.648

East bounding longitude

1.768

North bounding latitude

60.861

South bounding latitude

49.864

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

1862-01-01

End position

2015-12-31

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2017-10-11

date type

creation

effective date

2017-07-11

date type

revision

effective date

2017-10-06

Frequency of update

notPlanned

Quality and validity

Lineage

SPI is calculated as originally defined in [1]. SPI is based on the cumulative probability of a given rainfall amount occurring at a location. The historic rainfall data of the station is fitted to a statistical distribution. For this dataset, the statistical distribution used is the gamma distribution, which has been extensively used and is recommended as a default choice for Europe by [2]. The L-moments method was used to estimate the gamma distribution parameters, as the maximum likehood method was failing to fit a realistic distribution in some isolated cases. To calculate SPI, the R package SCI was used, but modified to use L-moments (instead of Maximum Likelihood). The input data used is the monthly rainfall grids from the Met Office 5km gridded rainfall product. In this version of the dataset (version 4), the monthly rainfall grids from 1960 to 2000 was derived from the Met Office 5-km daily rainfall grids, to address some localised issues that were found in the Met Office monthly rainfall grids. [1] McKee, T. B., Doesken, N. J., Kleist, J. (1993). The Relationship of Drought Frequency and Duration to Time Scales. Eighth Conference on Applied Climatology, 17-22 January 1993, Anaheim, California. [2] Stagge, J. H., Tallaksen, L. M., Gudmundsson, L., Van Loon, A. F. and Stahl, K. (2015), Candidate Distributions for Climatological Drought Indices (SPI and SPEI). Int. J. Climatol. doi: 10.1002/joc.4267

Conformity

Conformity report

specification

title

Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2010-12-08

degree

explanation

Data format

name of format

NetCDF

version of format

4

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Limitations on public access

Constraint set

Limitations on public access

Constraint set

Limitations on public access

If you reuse this data, you should cite: Tanguy, M., Fry, M., Svensson, C., Hannaford, J. (2017). Historic Gridded Standardised Precipitation Index for the United Kingdom 1862-2015 (generated using gamma distribution with standard period 1961-2010) v4. NERC Environmental Information Data Centre https://doi.org/10.5285/233090b2-1d14-4eb9-9f9c-3923ea2350ff

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

organisation name

UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

email address

enquiries@ceh.ac.uk

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Responsible party

organisation name

Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

email address

enquiries@ceh.ac.uk

responsible party role

author

Responsible party

organisation name

Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

email address

enquiries@ceh.ac.uk

responsible party role

author

Responsible party

organisation name

Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

email address

enquiries@ceh.ac.uk

responsible party role

author

Responsible party

organisation name

Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

email address

enquiries@ceh.ac.uk

responsible party role

author

Responsible party

organisation name

NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre

email address

enquiries@ceh.ac.uk

responsible party role

custodian

Responsible party

organisation name

NERC Environmental Information Data Centre

email address

enquiries@ceh.ac.uk

responsible party role

publisher

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

organisation name

Environmental Information Data Centre

full postal address

Lancaster Environment Centre, Library Avenue, Bailrigg

Lancaster

LA1 4AP

UK

email address

info@eidc.ac.uk

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2023-02-09T11:09:54

Metadata language

eng