DOI: 10.25927/e9592-xzk62
title: CHAPTER: 3x3 km meteorological data 1981-2022 for Europe: 2D extracted fields

description: This is the first dataset released from the HPC project CHAPTER ("Computational Hydrometeorology – with Advanced Processing Tools to Enhanced Realism"), produced on SuperMUC-NG (Leibniz Supercomputing Centre, LRZ, D).
Using and testing modern IT techniques for workflow control and data management, CHAPTER has produced a competitive cloud-permitting atmospheric/meteorological dataset at a resolution of 3x3 km for central Europe and the Mediterranean for 1981-2022.
Here, we publish an excerpt from our multi-PB archive, containing the following fields: hourly cumulated precipitation ("PREC_AC_NC", in mm), zonal and meridional component of wind at 10 m ("U10" and "V10", in m/s), temperature at 2 m ("T2", in K), specific humidity at 2 m ("Q2", in kg/kg), hourly cumulated snow ("SNOW_ACC_NC", in m of water equivalent), downward shortwave radiation at bottom ("SWDNB", in W/m²), downward longwave radiation at bottom  ("LWDNB", in W/m²), upward longwave radiation at bottom  ("LWUPB", in W/m²). The data are organised in yearly folders, daily subfolders and finally in one file per field (named according to the abbreviations of the nine fields mentioned). The file format is netcdf.
The CHAPTER data was produced by dynamically downscaling the ERA5 dataset of ECMWF with WRF-ARW. The model was set up with 2 domains (D01 and a smaller D02), with a resolution of 9 km (D01) and 3 km (D02), respectively. DO2 covers countries from Estonia to the United Kingdom in the north and from Israel over Tunisia to the largest part of Morocco in the south. The WRF model physical setup has been derived to a large extent from Pieri et al. (2015) and von Hardenberg et al. (2015). The Yonsei University scheme (Hong et al. 2006) has been chosen for the planetary boundary layer turbulence closure, the RRTMG shortwave and longwave schemes are used for radiation (Iacono et al. 2008; Mlawer et al. 1997; Iacono et al. 2000), and the Rapid Up-date Cycle (RUC) scheme has been chosen (Smirnova et al. 1997, 2000) as a multi-level soil model (6 levels) with higher resolution in the upper soil layer (0, 5, 20, 40, 160, 300 cm). No cumulus scheme has been activated in the innermost domain (D02) because the grid spacing allows us to resolve the convection dynamics. For consistency with the boundary conditions, the New Simplified Arakawa-Schubert (NewSAS) convection scheme (Han and Pan, 2001) has been used in the outermost domain (D01). The single-moment 6-class microphysics scheme (Hong and Lim, 2006) has been adopted.
CHAPTER data can be used to understand extreme-weather events and to model flash floods or forest fires, atmospheric dispersion or air quality, just to name a few applications. The dataset as a whole is meant to advance our understanding of the mechanisms of past natural disasters and phenomena, to discover climate-change signals in the phenomena investigated, and to understand how current models have to be set up in order to reproduce observations – i.e. to produce predictions useful for administrative and political decision making.
Access to the dataset:
The dataset is available via the GLOBUS file-transfer service for large-volume data (see app.globus.com).
Direct link to the dataset on GLOBUS: CHAPTER-public folder on the LRZ DSA Container PN29CO-DSS-0000.
To gain access to the data, it is necessary to be signed up to a free GLOBUS user account and have an endpoint (transfer target, e.g. installed free Globus Connect Personal). You can create an account for free, or – if your institution is federated – use your institutional account to sign in (conditions see www.globusonline.org/legal/terms; GLOBUS is based in Chicago/US).