Information related to the ERA40 General Circulation Model. Andalusia’s Local Climate Change Scenario updated to IPCC’s 5th Report

ERA40 European reanalysis of the ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) for the period 1960-2000. ERA40 provides “observations” of the predictors, and covers the entire earth’s surface with a grid of 1.125° x 1.125°, with six-hour resolution (4 data per day). However, this information of relative high resolution (spatial and temporal), should be relaxed to that of the General Circulation Model (GMC) to be used later (grids of 2 to 3º of arm, and in general with a single data per day), since in this validation it is intended to evaluate the error of the downscaling methodology applied under the same conditions that will then be applied to the CGMs.This is important, as some downscaling methodologies improve their regionalisation capacity the higher spatial and temporal resolution the input information (predictors) has. Therefore, if the spatial and temporal resolution of the ERA40 were not relaxed to that of the CGM that is to be regionalised, we would obtain minor verification errors than what should actually be considered (and corrected). “Information on Scenarios contemplated by ERA40” Stage HIST: Historical scenario of reference for the period 1961-2000. It is the climate information observed in that period.