External datasets catalogue

Annual cumulated melt area of the Greenland ice sheet — 24 Oct 2012

Time evolution of the annual cumulated Greenland ice sheet melt area simulated by regional climate models and retrieved from the spaceborne passive microwave data set with different techniques. The cumulated melt area is defined as the annual total sum of every daily ice sheet melt area.

Recent mass balance estimates of the Greenland ice sheet — 24 Oct 2012

Estimates are based on the mass budget method, based on the output from regional climate models and satellite altimetry and satellite gravimetry data.

Assessing agriculture vulnerabilities for the design of effective measures for adaption to climate change - AVEMAC project — 22 Oct 2012

Energy statistics (Eurostat) — 18 Oct 2012

Heating degree-days by NUTS 2 regions - annual data

World Urbanization Prospects — 18 Oct 2012

Data on urban and rural populations , the 2011 Revision (UN)

Global mean sea level reconstruction (satellite and altimetre, CSIRO) — 18 Oct 2012

Reconstructed GMSL since 1880 as described in Church and White (2011). The papers describing this dataset are: Church, J. A. and N.J. White (2011), Sea-level rise from the late 19th to the early 21st Century. Surveys in Geophysics, doi:10.1007/s10712-011-9119-1. This paper is published "Open Access" and is available as a pdf: http://www.springerlink.com/content/h2575k28311g5146/ D. Masters , R. S. Nerem , C. Choe , E. Leuliette , B. Beckley , N. White & M. Ablain (2012): Comparison of Global Mean Sea Level Time Series from TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, and Jason-2, Marine Geodesy, 35:sup1, 20-41. (DOI: 10.1080/01490419.2012.717862)   The time series is updated continuously (data available on the website).  

Global Ocean OSTIA Sea Surface Temperature and Sea Ice Analysis — 18 Oct 2012

Global Ocean OSTIA Sea Surface Temperature and Sea Ice Reanalysis - SST_GLO_SST_L4_NRT_OBSERVATIONS_010_001_a (provided by CMEMS)

Flow Regime for International Experiment and Network Data (FRIEND) based on Unesco's European Water Archive (EWA) — 17 Oct 2012

Hawaii Ocean Time-series (HOT) — 17 Oct 2012

2 m temperature reanalysis for whole globe — 17 Oct 2012

State of the Climate in 2011, NOAA

Reanalysis suggests long-term upward trend in European storminess since 1871 — 17 Oct 2012

Key Points: We present robust upward trends in European storminess over the past 140 years. The storminess measures show unprecedented high values in recent decades. We show good agreement of the new reanalysis data with established reanalyses.

Modelling of agricultural production: weather, soils and crops. — 17 Oct 2012

The book examines quantitive aspects of agricultural production as influenced by environmental conditions and management practices. The approach used has been adopted by the Centre for World Food Studies (SOW) at Wageningen and is based on an international course held at the Agricultural University in this city. Many exercises and examples are included in the text to facilitate direct application of the theory presented, and answers to the exercises are provided. All the models can be handled with the help of a pocket calculator.

Evaluation and future projections of temperature, precipitation and wind extremes over Europe in an ensemble of regional climate simulations — 17 Oct 2012

Evaluation and future projections of temperature, precipitation and wind extremes over Europe in an ensemble of regional climate simulations” - Tellus (2011), 63A, 41–55

The Hot Summer of 2010: Redrawing the Temperature Record Map of Europe — 17 Oct 2012

Towards a general relationship between climate change and biodiversity: an example for plant species in Europe — 17 Oct 2012

Climate change is one of the main factors that will affect biodiversity in the future and may even cause species extinctions. We suggest a methodology to derive a general relationship between biodiversity change and global warming. In conjunction with other pressure relationships, our relationship can help to assess the combined effect of different pressures to overall biodiversity change and indicate areas that are most at risk. We use a combination of an integrated environmental model (IMAGE) and climate envelope models for European plant species for several climate change scenarios to estimate changes in mean stable area of species and species turnover. We show that if global temperature increases, then both species turnover will increase, and mean stable area of species will decrease in all biomes. The most dramatic changes will occur in Northern Europe, where more than 35% of the species composition in 2100 will be new for that region, and in Southern Europe, where up to 25% of the species now present will have disappeared under the climatic circumstances forecasted for 2100. In Mediterranean scrubland and natural grassland/steppe systems, arctic and tundra systems species turnover is high, indicating major changes in species composition in these ecosystems. The mean stable area of species decreases mostly in Mediterranean scrubland, grassland/steppe systems and warm mixed forests.

Rapid Range Shifts of Species Associated with High Levels of Climate Warming — 11 Oct 2012

The distributions of many terrestrial organisms are currently shifting in latitude or elevation in response to changing climate. Using a meta-analysis, we estimated that the distributions of species have recently shifted to higher elevations at a median rate of 11.0 meters per decade, and to higher latitudes at a median rate of 16.9 kilometers per decade. These rates are approximately two and three times faster than previously reported. The distances moved by species are greatest in studies showing the highest levels of warming, with average latitudinal shifts being generally sufficient to track temperature changes. However, individual species vary greatly in their rates of change, suggesting that the range shift of each species depends on multiple internal species traits and external drivers of change. Rapid average shifts derive from a wide diversity of responses by individual species.

Potential impacts of climate change on the distributions and diversity patterns of European mammals — 11 Oct 2012

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts an increase in global temperatures of between 1.4°C and 5.8°C during the 21st century, as a result of elevated CO 2 levels. Using bioclimatic envelope models, we evaluate the potential impact of climate change on the distributions and species richness of 120 native terrestrial non-volant European mammals under two of IPCC’s future climatic scenarios. Assuming unlimited and no migration, respectively, our model predicts that 1% or 5–9% of European mammals risk extinction, while 32–46% or 70–78% may be severely threatened (lose > 30% of their current distribution) under the two scenarios. Under the no migration assumption endemic species were predicted to be strongly negatively affected by future climatic changes, while widely distributed species would be more mildly affected. Finally, potential mammalian species richness is predicted to become dramatically reduced in the Mediterranean region but increase towards the northeast and for higher elevations. Bioclimatic envelope models do not account for non-climatic factors such as land-use, biotic interactions, human interference, dispersal or history, and our results should therefore be seen as first approximations of the potential magnitude of future climatic changes.

Range mismatching of interacting species under global change — 11 Oct 2012

Aim  We investigate the importance of interacting species for current and potential future species distributions, the influence of their ecological characteristics on projected range shifts when considering or ignoring interacting species, and the consistency of observed relationships across different global change scenarios. Location  Europe. Methods  We developed ecological niche models (generalized linear models) for 36 European butterfly species and their larval host plants based on climate and land-use data. We projected future distributional changes using three integrated global change scenarios for 2080. Observed and projected mismatches in potential butterfly niche space and the niche space of their hosts were first used to assess changing range limitations due to interacting species and then to investigate the importance of different ecological characteristics.

Climatic Risk Atlas of European Butterflies — 11 Oct 2012

The overarching aim of the atlas is to communicate the potential risks of climatic change to the future of European butterflies. The main objectives are to: (1) provide a visual aid to discussions on climate change risks and impacts on biodiversity and thus contribute to risk communication as a core element of risk assessment; (2) present crucial data on a large group of species which could help to prioritise conservation efforts in the face of climatic change; (3) reach a broader audience through the combination of new scientific results with photographs of all treated species and some straight forward information about the species and their ecology. The results of this atlas show that climate change is likely to have a profound effect on European butterflies. Ways to mitigate some of the negative impacts are to (1) maintain large populations in diverse habitats; (2) encourage mobility across the landscape; (3) reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses; (4) allow maximum time for species adaptation; (4) conduct further research on climate change and its impacts on biodiversity. The book is a result of long-term research of a large international team of scientists, working at research institutes and non-governmental organizations, many within the framework of projects funded by the European Commission.

Differences in the climatic debts of birds and butterflies at a continental scale — 11 Oct 2012

Climate changes have profound effects on the distribution of numerous  plant and animal species. However, whether and how different  taxonomic groups are able to track climate changes at large spatial scales is still unclear. Here, we measure and compare the climatic debt accumulated by bird and butterfly communities at a European scale over two decades (1990–2008). We quantified the yearly change in community composition in response to climate change for 9,490 bird and 2,130 butterfly communities distributed across Europe 4 . We show that changes in community composition are rapid but different between birds and butterflies and equivalent to a 37 and 114   km northward shift in bird and butterfly communities, respectively. We further found that, during the same period, the northward shift in temperature in Europe was even faster, so that the climatic debts of birds and butterflies correspond to a 212 and 135   km lag behind climate. Our results indicate both that birds and butterflies do not keep up with temperature increase and the accumulation of different climatic debts for these groups at national and continental scales.