DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15037343
title: ClimateForecasts: Globally Observed Environmental Data for 15,504 Weather Station Locations

description: ClimateForecasts is a database that provides environmental data for 15,504 weather station locations and 49 environmental variables, including 38 bioclimatic variables, 8 soil variables and 3 topographic variables. Data were extracted from the same 30 arc-seconds global grid layers that were prepared when making the TreeGOER (Tree Globally Observed Environmental Ranges) database that is available from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7922927. Details on the preparations of these layers are provided by Kindt, R. (2023). TreeGOER: A database with globally observed environmental ranges for 48,129 tree species. Global Change Biology 29: 6303–6318. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.16914. A similar extraction process was used for the CitiesGOER database that is also available from Zenodo via https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.8175429.

ClimateForecasts (as the CitiesGOER) was designed to be used together with TreeGOER and possibly also with the GlobalUsefulNativeTrees database (Kindt et al. 2023) to allow users to filter suitable tree species based on environmental conditions of the planting site. One example of combining data from these different sets in the R statistical environment is available from this Rpub: https://rpubs.com/Roeland-KINDT/1114902.

The identities including the geographical coordinates of weather stations were sourced from Meteostat, specifically by downloading (17-FEB-2024) the ‘lite dump’ data set with information for active weather stations only. Two weather stations where the country could not be determined from the ISO 3166-1 code of ‘XA’ were removed. If weather stations had the same name, but occurred in different ISO 3166-2 regions, this region code was added to the name of the weather station between square brackets. Afterwards duplicates (weather stations of the same name and region) were manually removed.

Bioclimatic variables for future climates correspond to the median values from 24 Global Climate Models (GCMs) for Shared Socio-Economic Pathway (SSP) 1-2.6 for the 2050s (2041-2060), from 21 GCMs for SSP 3-7.0 for the 2050s and from 13 GCMs for SSP 5-8.5 for the 2090s. Similar methods were used to calculate these median values as in the case studies for the TreeGOER manuscript (calculations were partially done via the BiodiversityR::ensemble.envirem.run function and with downscaled bioclimatic and monthly climate 2.5 arc-minutes future grid layers available from WorldClim 2.1).

Maps were added in version 2024.03 where locations of weather stations were shown on a map of the Climatic Moisture Index (CMI). These maps were created by a similar process as in the TreeGOER Global Zones Atlas from the environmental raster layers used to create the TreeGOER via the terra package (Hijmans et al. 2022, version 1.7-46) in the R 4.2.1 environment. Added country boundaries were obtained from Natural Earth as Admin 0 – countries vector layers (version 5.1.1). Also added after obtaining them from Natural Earth were Admin 0 – Breakaway, Disputed areas (version 5.1.0, coloured yellow in the atlas) and Roads (version 5.0.0, coloured red in the atlas). For countries where the GlobalUsefulNativeTrees database included subnational levels, boundaries were added and depicted as dot-dash lines. These subnational levels correspond to level 3 boundaries in the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions. These were obtained from https://github.com/tdwg/wgsrpd. Check Brummit 2001 for details such as the maps shown at the end of this document.

Maps for version 2024.07 modified the dimensions of the sheets to those used in version 2024.06 of the TreeGOER Global Zones Atlas. Another modification was the inclusion of Natural Earth boundaries for Lakes (version 5.0.0, coloured darkblue in the atlas).

Version 2024.10 includes a new data set that documents the location of the city locations in Holdridge Life Zones. Information is given for historical (1901-1920), contemporary (1979-2013) and future (2061-2080; separately for RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) that are available for download from DRYAD and were created for the following article: Elsen et al. 2022. Accelerated shifts in terrestrial life zones under rapid climate change. Global Change Biology, 28, 918–935. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15962. Version 2024.10 further includes Holdridge Life Zones for the climates available from the previously included climates, calculating biotemperatures and life zones with similar methods as used by Holdridge (1947; 1967) and Elsen et al. (2022) (for future climates, median values were determined first for monthly maximum and minimum temperatures across GCMs ). The distributions of the 48,129 species documented in TreeGOER across the Holdridge Life Zones are given in this Zenodo archive: https://zenodo.org/records/14020914.

Version 2024.11 includes a new data set that documents the location of the weather stations in Köppen-Geiger climate zones. Information is given for historical (1901-1930, 1931-1960, 1961-1990) and future (2041-2070 and 2071-2099) climates, with for the future climates seven scenarios each (SSP 1-1.9, SSP 1-2.6, SSP 2-4.5, SSP 3-7.0, SSP 4-3.4, SSP 4-6.0 and SSP 5-8.5). This data set was created from raster layers available via: Beck, H.E., McVicar, T.R., Vergopolan, N. et al. High-resolution (1 km) Köppen-Geiger maps for 1901–2099 based on constrained CMIP6 projections. Sci Data 10, 724 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02549-6.

Version 2025.03 includes extra columns for the baseline, 2050s and 2090s datasets that partially correspond to climate zones used in the GlobalUsefulNativeTrees database. One of these zones are the Whittaker biome types, available as a polygon from the plotbiomes package (see also here). Whittaker biome types were extracted with similar R scripts as described by Kindt 2025 (these were also used to calculate environmental ranges of TreeGOER species, as archived here).

Version 2025.03 further includes information for the baseline climate on the steady state water table depth, obtained from a 30 arc-seconds raster layer calculated by the GLOBGM v1.0 model (Verkaik et al. 2024).

 

When using ClimateForecasts in your work, cite this depository and the following:



Fick, S. E., & Hijmans, R. J. (2017). WorldClim 2: New 1‐km spatial resolution climate surfaces for global land areas. International Journal of Climatology, 37(12), 4302–4315. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.5086

Title, P. O., & Bemmels, J. B. (2018). ENVIREM: An expanded set of bioclimatic and topographic variables increases flexibility and improves performance of ecological niche modeling. Ecography, 41(2), 291–307. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.02880

Poggio, L., de Sousa, L. M., Batjes, N. H., Heuvelink, G. B. M., Kempen, B., Ribeiro, E., & Rossiter, D. (2021). SoilGrids 2.0: Producing soil information for the globe with quantified spatial uncertainty. SOIL, 7(1), 217–240. https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-7-217-2021

Kindt, R. (2023). TreeGOER: A database with globally observed environmental ranges for 48,129 tree species. Global Change Biology, 00, 1–16. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.16914.

Meteostat (2024) Weather stations: Lite dump with active weather stations. https://github.com/meteostat/weather-stations (accessed 17-FEB-2024)


When using information from the Holdridge Life Zones, also cite:



Elsen, P. R., Saxon, E. C., Simmons, B. A., Ward, M., Williams, B. A., Grantham, H. S., Kark, S., Levin, N., Perez-Hammerle, K.-V., Reside, A. E., & Watson, J. E. M. (2022). Accelerated shifts in terrestrial life zones under rapid climate change. Global Change Biology, 28, 918–935. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15962


When using information from Köppen-Geiger climate zones, also cite:



Beck, H.E., McVicar, T.R., Vergopolan, N., Berg, A., Lutsko, N.J., Dufour, A., Zeng, Z., Jiang, X., van Dijk, A.I. and Miralles, D.G. 2023. High-resolution (1 km) Köppen-Geiger maps for 1901–2099 based on constrained CMIP6 projections. Sci Data 10, 724. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02549-6


When using information on the Whittaker biome types, also cite:



Ricklefs, R. E., Relyea, R. (2018). Ecology: The Economy of Nature. United States: W.H. Freeman.

Whittaker, R. H. (1970). Communities and ecosystems.

Valentin Ștefan, & Sam Levin. (2018). plotbiomes: R package for plotting Whittaker biomes with ggplot2 (v1.0.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7145245


When using information on the steady state water table depth, also cite:



Verkaik, J., Sutanudjaja, E. H., Oude Essink, G. H., Lin, H. X., & Bierkens, M. F. (2024). GLOBGM v1. 0: a parallel implementation of a 30 arcsec PCR-GLOBWB-MODFLOW global-scale groundwater model. Geoscientific Model Development, 17(1), 275-300. https://gmd.copernicus.org/articles/17/275/2024/


 

The development of ClimateForecasts and its partial integration in version 2024.03 of the GlobalUsefulNativeTrees database was supported by the Darwin Initiative to project DAREX001 of Developing a Global Biodiversity Standard certification for tree-planting and restoration, by Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative through the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Ethiopia to the Provision of Adequate Tree Seed Portfolio project in Ethiopia, by the Green Climate Fund through the IUCN-led Transforming the Eastern Province of Rwanda through Adaptation project and through the Readiness proposal on Climate Appropriate Portfolios of Tree Diversity for Burkina Faso, by the Bezos Earth Fund to the Quality Tree Seed for Africa in Kenya and Rwanda project and by the German International Climate Initiative (IKI) to the regional tree seed programme on The Right Tree for the Right Place for the Right Purpose in Africa.