Assessment of quality of European climate observations and their appropriateness for use in climate services for each sector

Temperatures and precipitation amounts from many different gridded datasets have been compared with weather observations in the key MED-GOLD study regions: Andalucía (southern Spain), Douro valley (Portugal), Foggia, Ancona and Ravenna (Italy), and Colombia. Monthly means, seasonal means of temperature, and the corresponding precipitation totals, plus climatic indices relevant for each crop type, were calculated from gridded datasets and local weather station data. Comparisons between these two datasets showed that, for Europe, the E-OBS gridded dataset consistently had the closest agreement with the local observations. It is recommended that this dataset could be used within MED-GOLD in areas lacking observations from weather stations, and evaluation of regional climate model simulations. For Colombia, an equivalent dataset to E-OBS doesn’t exist. Instead, the AgMERRA dataset is recommended