(July 2000)
Following the UKCIP98 climate scenarios , an interim set of daily weather scenarios have been constructed to satisfy a demand from the climate impacts community for higher spatial and temporal resolution climate scenario information. These interim weather scenarios termed the "Interim MAFF2000 Weather Scenarios" have been constructed from results obtained using the UK Hadley Centre Regional Climate Model (HadRMs). These interim weather scenarios contain daily time series for 125 land boxes covering the UK and Ireland (approximately 50 km resolution) for seven climate variables: maximum temperature, minimum temperature, mean temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, downward surface short wave radiation and mean wind speed. There is a 30 year baseline daily dataset for the nominal period "1961-1990" and then eight 20-year weather scenarios, one for each of the four UKCIP98 scenarios: Low, Medium-low, Medium-high and High and for each of two time periods: the 2020s ("2015-2034") and the 2050s ("2045-2064").
The scenario data files can be obtained via FTP by clicking on the buttons below. The baseline series is 113 MB in size (27MB when gzipped) and each of the eight scenario files is 75 MB in size (18MB when gzipped). The zipped files (binary; gzip under WinZip or Unix) may be found in the following location:
maff2000_baseline.dat.gz (binary)
maff2000_low_2020s.dat.gz (binary)
maff2000_mlow_2020s.dat.gz (binary)
maff2000_mhigh_2020s.dat.gz (binary)
maff2000_high_2020s.dat.gz (binary)
maff2000_low_2050s.dat.gz (binary)
maff2000_mlow_2050s.dat.gz (binary)
maff2000_mhigh_2050s.dat.gz (binary)
maff2000_high_2050s.dat.gz (binary)
A documentation file should be viewed and copied as this describes the scenarios and their construction, as well as the nomenclature and format of the data files, and guidelines for use.
An appendix to this documentation shows some diagnostics from the scenarios in terms of plots mean daily and yearly series and tables of monthly, seasonal and annual averages and some probability statistics from these data sets. A co-ordinates data file - regco.dat contains information on the grid co-ordinates of each of the 125 land boxes, both on their native grid which is in rotated pole co-ordinates and in absolute lonigude/latitude co-ordinates.The data sets were constructed under a contract from the UK Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Contract No: DETR EPG 1/1/114).
Dr Mike Hulme
Climatic Research Unit
School of Environmental Sciences
University of East Anglia
Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK