Climatic Research Unit : Research and Projects

STARDEX

Statistical and Regional dynamical Downscaling of Extremes for European regions

A research project supported by
the European Commission under the Fifth Framework Programme
and contributing to the implementation of the Key Action
"Global change, climate and biodiversity"
within the Environment, Energy and Sustainable Development.

Contract no: EVK2-CT-2001-00115

February 2002 to July 2005

Co-ordinated by Dr Clare Goodess, Climatic Research Unit

STARDEX will provide a rigorous and systematic inter-comparison and evaluation of statistical, dynamical and statistical-dynamical downscaling methods for the construction of scenarios of extremes. The more robust techniques will be identified and used to produce future scenarios of extremes for European case-study regions for the end of the 21st century. These will help to address the vital question as to whether extremes will occur more frequently in the future.

STARDEX is part of a co-operative cluster of projects exploring future changes in extreme events in response to global warming. The other members of the cluster are MICE and PRUDENCE. This research is highly relevant to current climate related problems in Europe.

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News

Final Report
The STARDEX final report is now available.
This is the best introduction to STARDEX, providing a summary of aims, methodologies and key results.
Final Management Report
The STARDEX final management report is now available.

There is an archive of old news items.

Deliverables

D9: Trends in extreme daily precipitation and temperature across Europe in the 2nd half of the 20th century
D10: Recommendations on methodologies for identification of the best predictor variables for extreme events
D11: Recommendations on variables and extremes for which downscaling is required
D12: Intercomparison of statistical downscaling methods based on NCEP Reanalysis data
D13: Evaluation of the reliability of downscaling predictor variables in the HadAM3P GCM
D15: Improved statistical downscaling methodologies: description of the STARDEX methods
D16: Recommendations on the more robust statistical and dynamical downscaling methods for the construction of scenarios of extremes
D18: Summary of likely changes in extremes at the end of the 21st Century. Includes regional scenario information sheets.

Information Sheets

Information sheet 1: Camouflage, Bluff, or Real? Statistical Uncertainty of Trends in Catastrophic Extremes
Information sheet 2: The August 2002 Flood in Central and Eastern Europe and Results from the EU STARDEX Project
Information sheet 3: Record Warm Summer in Western Europe in 2003

STARDEX Diagnostic Extremes Indices Software

Version 3.3.1 updated 2nd June 2004. See documentation for version history.
This software calculates 57 annual and seasonal extremes indices (such as percentiles, growing season length and wet/dry day duration) from daily temperature and precipitation time series. It is provided free of use. The two software elements (a Fortran subroutine that calculates all the indices for a single location and a Fortran program that uses this subroutine to process station data in a standard input format) are accompanied by a user information document.

Diagnostic_tool.pdf - documentation
indices.tar.gz - source code and documentation as a single gzipped TAR file
STARDEX Core Indices
An overview of linear regression methods

Data Products

Indices: STARDEX core extremes indices calculated for 491-station European data set
Downscaled series: Calculated from NCEP data as well as control and perturbed GCM experiments - available here

Publications

STARDEX Publications

Reports

STARDEX Final Management Report

Overview Presentations

Clare Goodess

Introducing STARDEX:STAtistical and Regional dynamical Downscaling of EXtremes for European regions, COP11, November 2005
Introducing STARDEX:STAtistical and Regional dynamical Downscaling of EXtremes for European regions, COP10, December 2004
Circulation classification and statistical downscaling: the experience of the STARDEX project, EMS/ECAC, Nice, September 2004
STARDEX - the lessons learned so far, PRUDENCE final meeting, Toledo, September 2004
Overview of STARDEX, PRUDENCE, MICE and ENSEMBLES, 1er Symposium Ouranos sur les changements climatiques, Montreal, June 2004
EGU Assembly, Nice, France, April 2004
Canadian national workshop on the development of scenarios of climate variability and extremes, Victoria, Canada, October 2003
Royal Meteorological Society conference, Norwich, UK, September 2003
EGS-AGU-EUG Joint Assembly, Nice, France, April 2003
MICE meeting, Cologne, Germany, January 2003
ICTP workshop/2nd PRUDENCE meeting, Trieste, Italy, October 2002
Overview of STARDEX, March 2002

Dataset links

The following data sets are available from other organisations and projects and are likely to be of use to STARDEX participants. In some cases, registration may be needed before a data set can be downloaded or used and restrictions of use may apply. STARDEX participants should quote the project name/funding body/contract number where appropriate. Data sets which are restricted to the STARDEX consortium are available from the internal pages.

NCEP Reanalysis data for a European window
HadCRUT2 - 5° x 5° gridded land and sea surface temperature
HadISST - 1° x 1° gridded sea surface temperature
Northern Hemisphere EASE-Grid weekly snow cover and sea ice extent
Daily European station data from the European Climate Assessment
Alpine precipitation analyses from the Mesoscale Alpine Programme

The following datasets are provided from the STARDEX data repository:

Reformatted KNMI Tmin/mean/max and precip. daily data (42mb ZIPfile) from the European Climate Assessment (see description)