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Historic Standardised Precipitation Index time series for IHU Groups (1862-2015) v2

Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) data for Integrated Hydrological Units (IHU) groups (Kral et al., 2015; https://doi.org/10.5285/f1cd5e33-2633-4304-bbc2-b8d34711d902). SPI is a drought index based on the probability of precipitation for a given accumulation period as defined by McKee et al. [1]. SPI is calculated for different accumulation periods: 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, 24 months. Each of these is in turn 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. NOTE: the difference between this dataset with the previously published dataset 'Standardised Precipitation Index time series for IHU Groups (1961-2012) [SPI_IHU_groups]' (Tanguy et al., 2015; https://doi.org/10.5285/dfd59438-2170-4472-b810-bab33a83d09f), apart from the temporal 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). Within Historic Droughts project (grant number: NE/L01016X/1), the Met Office has digitised historic rainfall and temperature data to produce high quality historic rainfall and temperature grids, which motivated the change in the underlying data to calculate SPI. The methodology to calculate SPI is the same in the two datasets. This release supersedes the previous version, https://doi.org/10.5285/047d914f-2a65-4e9c-b191-09abf57423db, as it addresses localised issues with the source data (Met Office monthly rainfall grids) for the period 1960 to 2000. [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/a01e09b6-4b40-497b-a139-9369858101b3

Simple

Date (Publication)
2017-07-12
Date (Creation)
2017-07-10
Citation identifier
https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/id/a01e09b6-4b40-497b-a139-9369858101b3
Citation identifier
doi: / 10.5285/a01e09b6-4b40-497b-a139-9369858101b3
Other citation details

Tanguy, M., Fry, M., Svensson, C., Hannaford, J. (2017). Historic Standardised Precipitation Index time series for IHU Groups (1862-2015) v2. NERC Environmental Information Data Centre 10.5285/a01e09b6-4b40-497b-a139-9369858101b3

Point of contact
Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role
Centre for Ecology & Hydrology Tanguy, M.

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
UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

Tanguy, M.

enquiries@ceh.ac.uk

Point of contact
NERC Environmental Information Data Centre

info@eidc.ac.uk

Publisher
NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre

info@eidc.ac.uk

Custodian

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

  • Meteorological geographical features

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If you reuse this data, you should cite: Tanguy, M., Fry, M., Svensson, C., Hannaford, J. (2017). Historic Standardised Precipitation Index time series for IHU Groups (1862-2015) v2. NERC Environmental Information Data Centre https://doi.org/10.5285/a01e09b6-4b40-497b-a139-9369858101b3

Spatial representation type
Text, table
Language
English
Character set
UTF8
Topic category
  • Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere
Begin date
1862-01-01
End date
2015-12-31
N
S
E
W
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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/sd/a01e09b6-4b40-497b-a139-9369858101b3.zip

Supporting information

OnLine resource
Protocol Linkage Name
https://data-package.ceh.ac.uk/data/a01e09b6-4b40-497b-a139-9369858101b3

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dataset

Conformance result

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

Date (Publication)
2010-12-08
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., in preparation). 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 provided within Historic Droughts project (grant number: NE/L01016X/1), which has been area-averaged over each of the Integrated Hydrological Units (IHU) Hydrometric Groups (Kral et al., 2015; https://doi.org/10.5285/f1cd5e33-2633-4304-bbc2-b8d34711d902). In this version of the dataset (version 2), 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

Metadata

File identifier
a01e09b6-4b40-497b-a139-9369858101b3 XML
Metadata language
English
Character set
8859 Part 1
Hierarchy level
Dataset
Hierarchy level name

dataset

Date stamp
2025-03-21T13:19:52
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
 
 

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Spatial extent

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Keywords

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

Meteorological geographical features


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