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First 1979-2018 High-resolution Near-surface Meteorological Dataset on China Published

The first spatial-temporal high-resolution gridded near-surface meteorological dataset for 1979-2018, about Chinese meteorological conditions over the period, was recently published by a research team led by Prof. YANG Kun from the Tsinghua University.

With a temporal resolution of three hours and a spatial resolution of 0.1°, the China Meteorological Forcing Dataset (CMFD) is based on a combination of remote sensing products, reanalysis datasets and in-situ station data. It features seven near-surface meteorological measurements: surface pressure, 2-meter air temperature, specific humidity, 10-meter wind speed, downward shortwave radiation, downward long wave radiation and precipitation rate.

Previous datasets about China had difficulty depicting complex weather/climate patterns over the mountainous terrain in China’s middle and western regions. Furthermore, scientific communities were often not satisfied with the datasets due to their low resolution and systematic biases across China. Due to its continuous temporal coverage and consistent quality, the CMFD is one of the most widely used climate datasets on China.

According to He Jie, lead author of the study, an updated version of CMFD with new algorithms, new input datasets, and a new data-generating system is being developed. A dataset with reliable time series trends, broader spatial coverage and higher precision is expected to come out within the next few years.

This research was supported by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research (STEP), a TPE-related science project.

Annual mean temperature distribution in China, 1979-2018

Data available at: https://data.tpdc.ac.cn/en/data/8028b944-daaa-4511-8769-965612652c49/

Full-text available at: https://www.earth-syst-sci-data.net/11/1931/2019/