Overview:

ERA5-Land is a reanalysis dataset providing a consistent view of the evolution of land variables over several decades at an enhanced resolution compared to ERA5. ERA5-Land has been produced by replaying the land component of the ECMWF ERA5 climate reanalysis. Reanalysis combines model data with observations from across the world into a globally complete and consistent dataset using the laws of physics. Reanalysis produces data that goes several decades back in time, providing an accurate description of the climate of the past.

Surface temperature:

Temperature of the surface of the Earth. The skin temperature is the theoretical temperature that is required to satisfy the surface energy balance. It represents the temperature of the uppermost surface layer, which has no heat capacity and so can respond instantaneously to changes in surface fluxes.

The original ERA5-Land dataset (period: 2000 - 2020) has been reprocessed to:

- aggregate ERA5-Land hourly data to daily data (minimum, mean, maximum)

- while increasing the spatial resolution from the native ERA5-Land resolution of 0.1 degree (~ 9 km) to 30 arc-sec (~ 1 km) by image fusion with CHELSA data (V1.2) (https://chelsa-climate.org/).

For each day we used the corresponding monthly long-term average of CHELSA. The aim was to use the fine spatial detail of CHELSA and at the same time preserve the general regional pattern and fine temporal detail of ERA5-Land. The steps included aggregation and enhancement, specifically:

1. spatially aggregate CHELSA to the resolution of ERA5-Land

2. calculate difference of ERA5-Land - aggregated CHELSA

3. interpolate differences with a Gaussian filter to 30 arc seconds

4. add the interpolated differences to CHELSA

Data available is the daily average, minimum and maximum of surface temperature.

Software used:

GDAL 3.2.2 and GRASS GIS 8.0.0 (r.resamp.stats -w; r.relief)

Original ERA5-Land dataset license:

https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/api/v2/terms/static/licence-to-use-copernicus-products.pdf

CHELSA climatologies (V1.2):

Data used: Karger D.N., Conrad, O., Böhner, J., Kawohl, T., Kreft, H., Soria-Auza, R.W., Zimmermann, N.E, Linder, H.P., Kessler, M. (2018): Data from: Climatologies at high resolution for the earth's land surface areas. Dryad digital repository. http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.5061/dryad.kd1d4

Original peer-reviewed publication: Karger, D.N., Conrad, O., Böhner, J., Kawohl, T., Kreft, H., Soria-Auza, R.W., Zimmermann, N.E., Linder, P., Kessler, M. (2017): Climatologies at high resolution for the Earth land surface areas. Scientific Data. 4 170122. https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2017.122