European Climate Assessment and Dataset

The European Climate Assessment and Dataset (ECA&D) is a database of daily meteorological station observations across Europe and is gradually being extended to countries in the Middle East and North Africa. ECA&D has attained the status of Regional Climate Centre for high-resolution observation data in World Meteorological Organization Region VI (Europe and the Middle East). The objective of ECA&D is to monitor and analyze climate and changes in climate with a focus on climate extremes while making the data publicly available to download. Included in the database is a collection of daily series observations obtained from climatological divisions of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs), observatories and research centres throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. The daily series of observations is combined with quality control and analysis of extremes via climate change indices. The ECA&D project is initiated by the European Climate Support Network (ECSN) and is coordinated at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (Dutch: Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut or KNMI) which now funds the project after it was initially funded by EUMETNET, the network of European national meteorological services. the European Climate Assessment and Dataset contains 13472 series of observations at 3314 meteorological stations provided by 56 participants from 61 different countries and is constantly expanding. These participants contribute daily, quality controlled data from (a subset) of their national meteorological station networks. In order to ensure that each station's time series are as complete as possible, the database contains an automated update procedure that relies on daily data from SYNOP (surface synoptic observations) messages that are distributed in near real-time over the Global Telecommunication System (GTS). Any gaps in data are infilled with observations from nearby stations, provided they are within a distance radius and within a height range of less than .