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Data⚓︎

The supported models rely on data from the Copernicus's CDS, Eurostat's NUTS definition, and ISIMIP's population data.

Copernicus Data⚓︎

The CDS's ERA5-Land monthly dataset is currently being used for now. You can either download the data directly from CDS website or use the provided Python script, inout module.

For the latter option, please set up the CDS API as outlined below and take note of the naming convention used for the downloaded files.

Set up CDS API⚓︎

To use CDS API for downloading data, you need to first create an account on CDS to obtain your personal access token.

Create a .cdsapirc file containing your personal access token by following this instruction.

Naming convention⚓︎

The filenames of the downloaded netCDF files follow this structure: 

{base_name}_{year_str}_{month_str}_{day_str}_{time_str}_{var_str}_{ds_type}_{area_str}_raw.{ext}

  • base_name is "era5_data",
  • For list of numbers, i.e. years/months/days/times, the rule below is applied
    • If the values are continuous, the string representation is a concatenate of min and max values, separated by -
    • Otherwise, the string is a join of all values, separated by _
    • However, if there are more than 5 values, we only keep the first 5 ones and replace the rest by "_etc"
    • If the values are empty (e.g. no days or times in the download request), their string representation and the corresponding separator (i.e. "_") are omitted from the file name.
  • year_str is the string representation of list of years using the rule above.
  • Similarly for month_str. However, if the download requests all 12 months, month_str would be "allm"
  • day_str and time_str follows the same pattern, assuming that a month has at most 31 days ("alld") and a day has at most 24 hours ("allt").
    • Special case: if data is downloaded at time 00:00 per day only, time_str would be "midnight" (e.g. precipitation data for P-model)
  • For var_str, each variable has an abbreviation derived by the first letter of each word in the variable name (e.g. tp for total precipitation).
    • All abbreviations are then concatenated by _
    • If this concatenated string is longer than 30 characters, we only keep the first 2 characters and replace the the rest by "_etc"
  • As for ds_type:
    • If the file was downloaded from a monthly dataset, "monthly" is set to ds_type. This means the data is recorded only on the first day of each month.
    • For other datasets, when data is downloaded only at midnight (time_str = "midnight"), the ds_type is "daily", meaning one data record for one day of each month.
    • ds_type would be an empty string in other cases, i.e. multiple data records for each day of a month.
  • For area_str, if the downloaded data is only for an area of the grid (instead of the whole map), "area" would represent for area_str.
  • If the part before "_raw" is longer than 100 characters, only the first 100 characters are kept and the rest is replaced by "_etc"
  • "_raw" is added at the end to indicate that the file is raw data
  • Extension ext of the file can be .nc or .grib
  • If any of these fields (from year_str to area_str) are missing from the download request, the corresponding string and the preceding _ are removed from the file name.

Special case⚓︎

As for total precipitation data downloaded from dataset ERA5-Land hourly data from 1950 to present, the file name is structured as:

{base_name}_{start_date}-{end_date}_{time_str}_{var_str}_{ds_type}_{area_str}_raw.{ext}

In this case, time_str is "midnight" and ds_type is "daily".

Eurostat's NUTS definition⚓︎

The regions are set here and corresponding shapefiles can be downloaded here.

For downloading, please choose:

  • The latest year from NUTS year,
  • File format: SHP,
  • Geometry type: Polygons (RG),
  • Scale: 20M
  • CRS: EPSG: 4326
Note
  • After downloading the file, unzip it to access the root folder containing the NUTS data (e.g. folder named NUTS_RG_20M_2024_4326.shp)
    • Inside the unzipped folder, there are five different shapefiles, which are all required to display and extract the NUTS regions data. 
      shape data folder
|____.shp file: geometry data (e.g. polygons)
|____.shx file: index for geometry data
|____.dbf file: attribute data for each NUTS region (e.g NUTS name, NUTS ID)
|____.prj file: information on CRS
|____.cpg file: character encoding data
  • These NUTS definition files are for Europe only.
  • If a country does not have NUTS level \(x \in [1,3]\), the corresponding data for these levels is excluded from the shapefiles.

NUTS_ID explanation:⚓︎

  • Structure of NUTS_ID: <country><level>
  • country: 2 letters, representing name of a country, e.g. DE
  • level: 0 to 3 letters or numbers, signifying the level of the NUTS region

ISIMIP Data⚓︎

To download population data, please perform the following steps:

  • go to ISIMIP website
  • search population from the search bar
  • choose simulation round ISIMIP3a
  • click Input Data -> Direct human forcing -> Population data -> histsoc
  • choose population_histsoc_30arcmin_annual
  • download file population_histsoc_30arcmin_annual_1901_2021.nc