cc: m.haylock@uea.ac.uk, mark.new@ouce.ox.ac.uk date: Mon Aug 22 16:59:40 2005 from: Phil Jones subject: Russian daily precipitation data to: Lisette Klok , Albert.Klein.Tank@knmi.nl Albert and Lisette, Malcolm forwarded me the maps. The coverage is looking very good. Seeing all the stations over Russia and fUSSR got me thinking about another series of emails that came last week when I was away. In EMULATE we've noticed a lot of problems with the long-term homogeneity of fUSSR precip data, before 1967. The two emails below are to Anders and Alex (of EMULATE) asking them to download this new corrected dataset from Pasha Groisman. This will be available from Sept 1 2005. I have got it earlier from Tom Peterson with download instructions. I would suggest that you also get this dataset for ENSEMBLES. We should be making use of these improvements to the database, despite the hassle of pairing off the stations across the fUSSR. I know these data are no longer as measured, but they have been modified by the best person (Groisman) whoshould know what he's doing. Cheers Phil PS to Albert - I suspect this affects our ..stans from the Pune meeting, but let's ignore that. There wasn't too much happening on the large scale for precip. Anders, Alex, With these instructions and ftp site you should be able to get the daily Russian precip data. Can one of you download this lot as David is aware here this week and next? I suspect you will get many more stations than we will need, but hopefully you will be able to replace all the precip data for our sites in Russia. If there are any problems or issues get back to Tom directly and cc to me. The data has also gone to Lisa and Xuebin Zhang, so we have gained about 10 days getting it earlier. One final thing, I suspect this problem with Russian precip applies to all the other fUSSR stations as well. David saw problems with Kiev in some examples the week before last. So check all these as well. Cheers Phil Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 08:52:37 -0400 From: "Thomas C Peterson" User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (Windows/20050716) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en To: Phil Jones Subject: Re: Russian daily precipitation data X-UEA-Spam-Score: 0.1 X-UEA-Spam-Level: / X-UEA-Spam-Flag: NO Dear Phil, I talked to Pasha about his data Friday. From what I can gather, Pasha homogeneity adjusted Russian precip several years ago in collaboration with a colleague back in Russia. These had adjustments to account for the installation of the windshield in the 1950s, the change in how they handled wetting (the liquid remaining in the gauge after puring it into the measuring devise) and the impact of changing the number of observations per day in the 1980s on the wetting adjustment. The windshield adjustment was just a factor applied to all stations for all observations. These are the data I've recommended we use in the Lisa et al. extremes paper. I reformatted them based on the flags & using the output from one of Pasha's directories Friday. I put them on our ftp site and sent Lisa & Xuebin the following message: I've reformatted the files to simple YYYY MM DD mm. The units are millimeters. The precision is 10ths of mm. However, when the precip was listed as 0 but it had the trace flag, I made the precip 0.01 mm. Missing is -99.90. You should be able to get the file via our ftp: [1]ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/download/ussr.adj.dly.Z I tarred the file and then compressed it when I saw how big it was. So first uncompress then untar (tar -xf). These were done on our lynux workstations. Pasha's data set that he is making available the end of the month has raw data, this version, and then an "unbiased" version. So the proper reference to these data would be in Pasha's new data set. All I'm doing is giving you a week jump on the data this part is available. ---- I should note that the inventory file I included had more stations than the number with daily data that I included in the tar file. I also was a little rushed Friday, so please let me know if anything is amiss with the data. Now, regarding Pasha's new data set. He says that will be available the end of the month. He doesn't want anyone to have access to it yet as he is double checking things. He also seems to be somewhat concerned about the reception it will have, or so I gathered, as he told me the story: "How do you recognize the first pioneers? By the arrows in their backs." This dataset is "unbiased". That means he and a different Russian colleague adjusted the data to be equivalent to what actually fell (e.g., accounting for wind induced under catch). The windshield adjustments are based on the actual wind speed during the storm events. Temperature and humidity are used as well. In blizzard conditions, the catch is lowered to account for blowing surface snow getting in the gauge. Lower than blizzard wind speed generally has the catch increased. Trace precip varies due to some formula but I saw values where trace was turned into 2 mm or 4 mm or (if memory serves) 0 mm. If adequate wind data was not present, the value of the valid precip measurement was set to missing. The data include daily and sub-daily amounts. This dataset may be a giant leap forward in some ways, but I personally would like to see the some analyses from it (which I often think of as post-production quality assurance testing) before I jumped into using it. Knowing Pasha, I expect those studies will be published fairly quickly. If you have any questions, please let me know. Regards, Tom Phil Jones wrote: Tom, Is it possible that you might help us get this daily Russian precipitation dataset any sooner? It will be called td-9813. The EMULATE project will run until the end of the year and we would be keen to get it sooner rather than later. Cheers Phil Hi Anders, Thanks for all the info. I have asked Tom Peterson to get a copy of the corrected dataset (he is co-author with me on a global extremes paper that has just been accepted in JGR). We access a couple of different sources for Russian data and do our own qc and homogeneity tests on the data so I hope that this new information will only have a minimal impact but it is important to know about it. It would have been nice to know about this sooner (Tom sits only a few desks away from Pasha) but I can understand that sometimes internal communication is harder than external communication! Cheers. Lisa. -----Original Message----- From: Anders Moberg [[2]mailto:anders@misu.su.se] Sent: Wednesday, 17 August 2005 8:01 PM To: Lisa Alexander Subject: Fwd: Re: Russian precipitation data Lisa, Here is a copy of the mail I got from Pasha Groisman (I did not send out a copy of this to EMULATE, but I thought you could be interested in reading his answer directly). This is the last message in this little series Cheers, Anders Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 08:34:21 -0400 From: "Pasha Groisman" [3] User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (Windows/20050716) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en To: Anders Moberg [4] Subject: Re: Russian precipitation data X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new at av-in.su.se Dear Anders: The description of this archive is attached. NCDC service should be able to assist you to get the data set. We have prepared a new data set (td-9813) that will be publicly available very soon (its description, a short version is also attached).. . How to Order Data: The data are distributed free of charge for use with a non-commercial purposes according to regulations outlined in WMO resolution 40. Contact NCDC's Climate Services about costs of copying of the off-line version of this dataset. Phone 828 271-4800 Fax 828-271-4876 e-mail [5]NCDC.Orders@noaa.gov 7. Archiving Data Center: Name: National Climatic Data Center/NCDC Address: Federal Building 151 Patton Ave. Asheville, NC 28801 5001 Phone: 828-271-4800 Fax 828-271-4876 e-mail [6]NCDC.Orders@noaa.gov Pasha Anders Moberg wrote: Dear Pasha, I am writing concerning long daily Russian (fUSSR) precipitation series, which you have written extensively about. I am a meteorologist at Stockholm University. Currently, I am involved in an EU-project called EMULATE which is coordinated by Phil Jones (CRU, Univ. East Anglia, UK). One component in EMULATE is to build a database with daily temperature and precipitation series for as many European sites as possible with data starting 1900 or earlier. We collect data from various sources, both through personal contacts, through digitization of original data within the project, and by using publicly available data. For the fUSSR region, our main data source has been the 223 station series in the NDP-040 dataset by Razuvaev et al. 1993, with subsequent updates obtained by Lisa Alexander at the Hadley Center (HC is also in EMULATE). We are aware of the various homogeneity problems with the precip data (relating to the corrections K1 and K3 etc.) that you have discussed in the literature. Is it possible to get access to your corrected version of the daily precip series? In your paper with Esfir Rankova in IJC (2001, vol. 21, p. 657-678) you mention that data are "available from the NCDC website for the 1891-1999 period (TD-3720)". I can, however, not find these data on the website. Could you help me/us to somehow get access to the data? Using homogenized Russian series instead of the original data would of course be a great improvement to our database. Hope you can help us in some way, If you are interested in more details about EMULATE, there are some on [7]http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/projects/emulate/ With kindest regards, Anders Moberg ------------------------------------------------------ Anders Moberg Associate Professor (Docent) Department of Meteorology Stockholm University SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden phone: +46 8 16 4349 fax. +46 8 15 7185 [8]anders@misu.su.se [9]http://www.misu.su.se/ -- Pavel Ya. Groisman, Ph.D. UCAR Project Scientist at NCDC National Climatic Data Center 151 Patton Avenue, Asheville, NC 28801, USA Ph. +1 (828) 271-4347; Fax: +1 (828) 271-4328 Office e-mail: [10]Pasha.Groisman@noaa.gov Home e-mail: [11]Pasha.Groisman@direcpc.com 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 [12]p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Thomas C. Peterson, Ph.D. Climate Analysis Branch National Climatic Data Center 151 Patton Avenue Asheville, NC 28801 Voice: +1-828-271-4287 Fax: +1-828-271-4328 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------