Date (Publication)

2015-05-22

Date (Creation)

2015-05-14

Citation identifier

CEH:EIDC: / 1431704829276

Citation identifier

https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/id/5e1792a0-ae95-4e77-bccd-2fb456112cc1

Citation identifier

doi: / 10.5285/5e1792a0-ae95-4e77-bccd-2fb456112cc1

Other citation details

Tanguy, M., Kral, F., Fry, M., Svensson, C., Hannaford, J. (2015). Standardised Precipitation Index time series for Integrated Hydrological Units Hydrometric Areas (1961-2012). NERC Environmental Information Data Centre 10.5285/5e1792a0-ae95-4e77-bccd-2fb456112cc1

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology	Tanguy, M.	enquiries@ceh.ac.uk	Point of contact
Centre for Ecology & Hydrology	Tanguy, M.	enquiries@ceh.ac.uk	Author
Centre for Ecology & Hydrology	Kral, F.	enquiries@ceh.ac.uk	Author
Centre for Ecology & Hydrology	Fry, M.	enquiries@ceh.ac.uk	Author
Centre for Ecology & Hydrology	Svensson, C.	enquiries@ceh.ac.uk	Author
Centre for Ecology & Hydrology	Hannaford, J.	enquiries@ceh.ac.uk	Author
NERC Environmental Information Data Centre		info@eidc.ac.uk	Publisher
NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre		info@eidc.ac.uk	Custodian

Maintenance and update frequency

Not planned

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

• Meteorological geographical features

GEMET - Concepts, version 4.1.3

• drought

Keywords

• Hydrology

• Integrated Hydrological Units

• IHU

• SPI

• indicator

• rainfall extremes

Access constraints

Other restrictions

Other constraints

Registration is required to access this data

Use constraints

Other restrictions

Other constraints

Licence terms and conditions apply

Use constraints

Other restrictions

Other constraints

If you reuse this data, you should cite: Tanguy, M., Kral, F., Fry, M., Svensson, C., Hannaford, J. (2015). Standardised Precipitation Index time series for Integrated Hydrological Units Hydrometric Areas (1961-2012). NERC Environmental Information Data Centre https://doi.org/10.5285/5e1792a0-ae95-4e77-bccd-2fb456112cc1

Spatial representation type

Text, table

Language

English

Character set

UTF8

Topic category

• Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere

Begin date

1961-01-01

End date

2012-12-31

Unique resource identifier

OSGB 1936 / British National Grid

Distribution format

Name	Version
Comma-separated values (CSV)

Distributor contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre		info@eidc.ac.uk	Distributor

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://data-package.ceh.ac.uk/data/5e1792a0-ae95-4e77-bccd-2fb456112cc1	Download the data

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://data-package.ceh.ac.uk/sd/5e1792a0-ae95-4e77-bccd-2fb456112cc1.zip	Supporting information

Hierarchy level

Dataset

Other

dataset

Statement

SPI is calculated as originally defined in McKee et al. [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 Stagge et al. [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 (more details on the choice of methodology in Tanguy et al. [3]). To calculate SPI, the R package SCI was used (Gudmundsson & Stagge [4]), but modified to use L-moments (instead of Maximum Likelihood). The input data used is the monthly rainfall grids from CEH-Gridded Estimates of Areal Rainfall [CEH-GEAR] (Tanguy et al. [5], Keller et al. [6]) which has been area-averaged over each of the Integrated Hydrological Units (IHU) Hydrometric Areas (Kral et al. [7]). [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 [3] Tanguy et al. (2015), in preparation. [4] Gudmundsson, L. & Stagge, J. H. (2014). Package 'SCI': Standardized Climate Indices such as SPI, SRI or SPEI. Repository CRAN, http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/SCI/SCI.pdf [5] Tanguy, M., Dixon, H., Prosdocimi, I., Morris, D. G., Keller, V. D. J. (2014). Gridded estimates of daily and monthly areal rainfall for the United Kingdom (1890-2012) [CEH-GEAR]. NERC-Environmental Information Data Centre doi:10.5285/5dc179dc-f692-49ba-9326-a6893a503f6e [6] Keller,V. D. J., Tanguy, M. , Prosdocimi, I. , Terry, J. A. , Hitt, O., Cole, S. J. , Fry, M., Morris, D. G., Dixon, H. (2015) CEH-GEAR: 1km resolution daily and monthly areal rainfall estimates for the UK for hydrological use. Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., 8, 83-112, www.earth-syst-sci-data-discuss.net/8/83/2015/ doi:10.5194/essdd-8-83-2015. [7] Kral, F., Fry, M., Dixon, H. (2015). Integrated Hydrological Units of the United Kingdom: Hydrometric Areas without Coastline. NERC-Environmental Information Data Centre doi:10.5285/3a4e94fc-4c68-47eb-a217-adee2a6b02b3

Metadata

File identifier

5e1792a0-ae95-4e77-bccd-2fb456112cc1 XML

Metadata language

English

Character set

8859 Part 1

Hierarchy level

Dataset

Hierarchy level name

dataset

Date stamp

2026-02-06T14:13:56

Metadata standard name

UK GEMINI

Metadata standard version

2.3

Metadata author

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre		info@eidc.ac.uk	Point of contact