Dataset
CRU JRA v2.5: A forcings dataset of gridded land surface blend of Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and Japanese reanalysis (JRA) data; Jan.1901 - Dec.2023.
Abstract
The CRU JRA V2.5 dataset is a 6-hourly, land surface, gridded time series of ten meteorological variables produced by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA), and is intended to be used to drive models. The variables are provided on a 0.5 degree latitude x 0.5 degree longitude grid, the grid is near global but excludes Antarctica (this is the same as the CRU TS grid, though the set of variables is different). The data are available at a 6 hourly time-step from January 1901 to December 2023.
The dataset is constructed by regridding data from the Japanese Reanalysis data (JRA) produced by the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA), adjusting where possible to align with the CRU TS 4.08 data (see the Process section and the ReadMe file for full details).
The CRU JRA data consists of the following ten meteorological variables: 2-metre temperature, 2-metre maximum and minimum temperature, total precipitation, specific humidity, downward solar radiation flux, downward long wave radiation flux, pressure and the zonal and meridional components of wind speed (see the ReadMe file for further details).
The CRU JRA dataset is intended to be a replacement of the CRU NCEP forcing dataset. The CRU JRA dataset follows the style of Nicolas Viovy's original CRU NCEP dataset rather than that which is available from UCAR. A link to the CRU NCEP documentation for comparison is provided in the documentation section.
This version of CRUJRA, v2.5 (1901-2023) is, where possible, adjusted to align with CRU TS monthly means or totals. A consequence of this is that, if CRU TS changes, then CRUJRA changes.
For this version, and version 4.07 of CRU TS, the CLD (cloud cover, %) variable is now actualised (converted from gridded anomalies) using the original CLD climatology and not the revised climatology introduced last year. This change/reversion is summarised here: https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/hrg/cru_cl_1.1/Read_Me_CRU_CL_CLD_Reversion.txt
Since CLD is used to align DSWRF, CRUJRA Downward Short Wave Radiation Flux (DSWRF) will now be 'closer to' version 2.2 and earlier and should be used in preference to v2.3.
If this dataset is used in addition to citing the dataset as per the data citation string users must also cite the following:
Harris, I., Osborn, T.J., Jones, P. et al. Version 4 of the CRU TS
monthly high-resolution gridded multivariate climate dataset.
Sci Data 7, 109 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-0453-3
Harris, I., Jones, P.D., Osborn, T.J. and Lister, D.H. (2014), Updated
high-resolution grids of monthly climatic observations - the CRU TS3.10
Dataset. International Journal of Climatology 34, 623-642.
Kobayashi, S., et. al., The JRA-55 Reanalysis: General Specifications and
Basic Characteristics. J. Met. Soc. Jap., 93(1), 5-48
https://dx.doi.org/10.2151/jmsj.2015-001
Details
| Previous Info: |
No news update for this record
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| Previously used record identifiers: |
No related previous identifiers.
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| Access rules: |
Access to these data is available to any registered CEDA user. Please Login or Register for a CEDA account to gain access.
Use of these data is covered by the following licence(s): http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/ When using these data you must cite them correctly using the citation given on the CEDA Data Catalogue record. |
| Data lineage: |
The CRU JRA data are produced by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia and are passed to the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) for long-term archival and distribution. |
| Data Quality: |
The data are quality controlled by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. Details are given in the paper Harries et al. 2014 and the release notes, links to both can be found in the documentation.
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| File Format: |
The data are provided as gzipped NetCDF files, with one file per variable, per year.
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Related Documents
Process overview
| Title | Climatic Research Unit (CRU) procedure to produce the CRU JRA v2.5 data. |
| Abstract | The CRU JRA (Japanese reanalysis) data is a replacement to the CRU NCEP dataset, CRU JRA data follows the style of Nicolas Viovy's original dataset rather than that which is available from UCAR. The CRU JRA dataset is based on the JRA-55 reanalysis dataset and aligned where appropriate with the CRU TS dataset version 4.08 (1901-2023). All JRA variables are regridded from their native TL319 Gaussian grid to the CRU regular 0.5° x 0.5° grid, using the g2fsh spherical harmonics routine from NCL (NCAR Command Language), based on the 'Spherepack' code. The exception is precipitation, which is regridded using ESMF 'nearest neighbour': all other algorithms tried exhibited unwanted artifacts. The JRA-55 reanalysis dataset starts in 1958. The years 1901-1957 are constructed using randomly-selected years between 1958 and 1967. Where alignment with CRU TS occurs, the relevant CRU TS data is used. Of the ten variables listed above, the last four do not have analogs in the CRU TS dataset. These are simply regridded, masked for land only, and output as CRUJRA. The other six are aligned with CRU TS as follows: TMP is aligned with CRU TS TMP. A monthly mean for the JRA data is --- TMAX and TMIN are aligned with CRUJRA TMP and CRU TS DTR. Firstly, at --- PRE is aligned with CRU TS PRE and WET (rain day counts). Firstly, the --- SPFH is aligned with CRU TS VAP. VAP is converted to SPFH, and JRA mean --- DSWRF is aligned with CRU TS CLD. CLD is converted to shortwave --- Where appropriate, CRUJRA values are kept within physically-appropriate |
| Input Description | None |
| Output Description | None |
| Software Reference | None |
No variables found.
Temporal Range
1901-01-01T00:00:00
2023-12-31T23:59:59
Geographic Extent
90.0000° |
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-180.0000° |
180.0000° |
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-60.0000° |