date: Mon Apr 18 17:00:57 2005 from: Phil Jones subject: Fwd: News about GPCC to: trenbert@ucar.edu Kevin, Sent to all our LAs and Aiguo Dai, but foolishly added the h to yours as I typed your email in rather than copying and pasting ! Cheers Phil Dear All, I've been slowly reading through the comments. I noted some on our use of precip datasets, particularly one by Aiguo Dai and the GPCC. It is true that they don't make their precip data sources available, but they have signed agreements to not pass the original data onto others. They have recently released several versions of their gridded datasets, which we should probably use in section 3.3 in some way. It is easiest to download directly from [1]http://gpcc.dwd.de and look for VASClimO. At least from 1951 this is likely the best source of land-based precip data to use. I say best only in the sense that it uses more stations than any others. Cheers Phil From: Rudolf Bruno To: 'Hans Teunissen' , m.manton@bom.gov.au, Makoto Suzuki , parkin@essic.umd.edu, Johannes Schmetz , Raino Heino , Raphael Okoola , David Parker , Kazutoshi Onogi , Ed Harrison , Mitch Goldberg , Thomas.C.Peterson@noaa.gov, p.jones@uea.ac.uk, Alan Thomas , Stephan Bojinski Subject: News about GPCC Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2005 13:22:12 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) X-UEA-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information X-UEA-MailScanner: Found to be clean Dear colleagues, dear friends I'm very glad to inform you about some outstanding news: 1) New Visualizer and Download ULRs: [2]http://orias.dwd.de/GPCC/GPCC_Visualizer [3]ftp://ftp.dwd.de/pub/data/gpcc/download.html The Visualizer has been re-designed and tranfered to a new platform. The tool is much faster now. Attention: The old ULR has been switched off. So change your bookmarks! All links to the old one will not work anymore. You can still access the Visualizer via GPCC's Website alias address [4]http://gpcc.dwd.de 2) Two new analysis products are available from the GPCC now: - a new 50-year Precipitation Climatology 1951-2000 optimized for homogeneity in time - Version 3 of the Full Data Product 1951-2004 optimized for best spatial coverage The first version of our climatological analyses is based on (mostly) complete and homogeneous time-series from observations at 9343 selected stations. It provides precipitation totals and the interpolation error (jackknife) for the 600 individual months (1951-2000). The gridded data (0.5 degree), format descripition and an introduction (pdf) is accessible via GPCC's Website [5]http://gpcc.dwd.de Go from there to the side menu item "VASClimO". Version 3 of the Full Data Product 1951-2004 includes the maximum number of stations for each individual month. The best covered period is from 1986 to 1990 (with about 40,000 stations). The number of stations gradually decreases after 1991 douwn to the basis of our near real-time Monitoring Product. Before 1986 the number of stations is between 10,000 and 15,000 as the attached figure illustrades. 3) Change of GPCC's affiliation within the DWD organisation The full GPCC has moved from the department for Climatology to the department for Hydrometeorology. That will not change GPCC's activities. For my person: For the next time I have to cover 2 jobs, the lead of the GPCC as well as of another division within this department. So, be patient with me, if I will not react immediately. Looking forward to a further good cooperation. With best regards, Bruno Rudolf ------------------------------------------ Dr. Bruno Rudolf Global Precipitation Climatology Centre c/o Deutscher Wetterdienst P.O. Box 10 04 65 63004 Offenbach am Main Germany Office: Kaiserleistr. 44, Room 214 Tel.: +49 - 69 - 8062 2765 Fax: +49 - 69 - 8062 3759 email: bruno.rudolf@dwd.de Web: [6]http://gpcc.dwd.de ------------------------------------------ Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ----------------------------------------------------------------------------