	            DATA FOR NORTHERN IBERIA CASE STUDY
	            ===================================
	
        The files in this directory are provided for the development of a 
stochastic weather generator for northern Iberia (defined here as 42N-44N,
9.5W-0W). Daily precipitation and temperature files are in subdirectory ECA; 
and daily files containing information on weather states derived from sea-level 
pressure fields are in subdirectory COST733 - see separate README.txt files in 
these subdirectories for further details. The remaining files in this directory 
are as follows:

        - dateutil.r      File containing R routines for manipulating dates
                          (mainly transformation between Julian day numbers
                          and YYYY/MM/DD formats)
                          
        - ERA40Predictors.nc    NetCDF file containing ERA40 reanalysis data
                          (see documentation for GetERA40.py below). NB
                          this file is *not* supplied with the materials for
                          the Trieste workshop, partly because of its size 
                          (58Mb) and partly because users of ERA40 data need
                          to agree to the conditions of use. If anyone wants
                          to replicate the preprocessing here therefore, they
                          must register with the ECMWF website (see below)
                          and run the Python script to download this NetCDF
                          file for themselves. 
                          
        - GetERA40.py     Python script used to download large-scale predictor
                          data in batch mode from the ERA40 Reanalysis dataset 
                          (http://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/data/era40_daily/). 
                          This script downloads six-hourly u- and v- wind 
                          components, 2-metre air temperature and dewpoint
                          temperature, and mean sea level pressure, on a
                          2.5x2.5 degree grid over the region 27.5N-45N,
                          10W-15E, for the period September 1957 to August 2002 
                          (the full extent of the ERA40 reanalysis). This 
                          selection has been guided by the results in Guterriez 
                          et al. (J. Climate, 2013); they suggest that for 
                          downscaling in Spain one should use sea level 
                          pressure and mean temperature from their region Z8,
                          which is the region considered here - they also 
                          used the ERA40 reanalysis. In addition to their
                          results however, there is general consensus that 
                          some measures of (a) moisture availability (b) air 
                          flow may be helpful. This is why I have also 
                          included the dewpoint temperature and wind vectors.
                          Note that the "official" VALUE treatment of this
                          dataset should use the ERA-INTERIM reanalysis 
                          (see http://www.value-cost.eu/validationTest) and
                          should consider the time period 1979-2010. The
                          reason I'm using ERA40 and 1957-2002 is that the 
                          weather types provided by COST733 are also based on 
                          ERA40, and I don't have time to recalculate them
                          based on ERA-INTERIM :-) 

        - GTOP30_Data.cdf Digital elevation data for the region, obtained from 
                          the GTOPO30 Digital Elevation Model at
                          http://webmap.ornl.gov/wcsdown/dataset.jsp?ds_id=10003.
                          GTOPO30 provides altitude data for the entire globe at 
                          roughly 1km^2 resolution. 
                          
        - GutierrezEtAl_2013.pdf        The Gutierrez et al J. Climate paper
                          referred to above (see GetERA40.py file description).
                          
        - llconvert.r     R script containing some utility routines for
                          manipulating geographic co-ordinates. 
                          
        - makedata.r      R script used to preprocess all of the data in 
                          this directory and its subdirectories, and 
                          generate the necessary files that enable model
                          development and simuation using Rglimclim. 
                          
        - stations_NorthIberia.pdf      Map of stations in study region.
                          The ones marked in red are the ones selected
                          for inclusion in the "official" VALUE validation 
                          exercise, due to their completeness (less than 1% 
                          of values missing between 1980 and 2010). The map 
                          was produced by someone (I don't know who!) in VALUE.
                          
                          
                                                        Richard Chandler
                                                        r.chandler@ucl.ac.uk
                                                        20th October 2014
