						CONTENTS OF THIS ARCHIVE
						========================
						
	This archive contains files relating to the downscaling of daily precipitation and temperature
data from a network of stations in northern Iberia, as part of the VALUE validation exercise (web
page at http://www.value-cost.eu/). The data are from the European Climate Assessment & Dataset 
(ECA&D), and can be used freely provided that the following source is acknowledged:

Klein Tank, A.M.G. and Coauthors, 2002. Daily dataset of 20th-century surface
air temperature and precipitation series for the European Climate Assessment.
Int. J. of Climatol., 22, 1441-1453.
Data and metadata available at http://www.ecad.eu

The files in the archive are as follows:

  - makedata.r					R script used to generate the other data files 
								in the archive, from various other sources.
								This is included primarily as a means of 
								documentation for the datasets, since it
								contains details of decisions that were 
								made when processing the data. 
  - Metadata_Precip.txt			Contains information on all of the Spanish
								stations contributing precipitation data to 
								the EC&A database. 
  - Metadata_Temp.txt			Ditto, temperature.
  -	NorthIberiaPrecipTemp.dat	Contains data in Rglimclim format, for 
								all Spanish stations north of 42 degrees 
								north and west of 0 degrees. These data
								are from the "non-blended" EC&A data product 
								(as opposed to the "blended" product in 
								which missing values have been infilled - 
								and which is being used elsewhere in VALUE). 
								The reason for using the non-blended product 
								is that infilling can induce artificial 
								structure in the dataset; and that Rglimclim 
								can cope happily with missing values so there
								is no need for the blending. Moreover, any 
								values flagged as "suspect" in the original 
								EC&A downloads have been removed. The earliest
								data in the file are from January 1924, and
								the latest from August 2012.
  - NorthernIberia_topovar.jpg	Maps showing the mean and standard deviation of
							    altitude over 3x3, 10x10 and 30x30km^2 windows
								within the study area (see stations.dat below
								for more details). A pdf version is also available. 
  - NullModel.def				An Rglimclim definition file for a null (i.e. 
								constant-only) model. This is needed to run
								the StartupScript.r code (see below). 
  -	README.txt					This file
  - StartupScript.r				A sample R script that shows how to use the
								other files to get started using Rglimclim
								to model these data.
  - stations.dat				Details of the stations for which data are
								present in the data file. For each station,
								the file gives the following variables:
								. Station identifier
								. Name
								. Latitude (degrees)
								. Longitude (degrees)
								. Altitude (hundreds of m)
								. Mapped altitude (hundreds of m). This is the
								  altitude as obtained from the GTOPO30 
								  Digital Elevation Model. The value given
								  here is the value for the 1km^2 square 
								  containing the station - which will obviously
								  be slightly different (in general) from the
								  "Altitude" value corresponding to the exact
								  location of the station. 
								. Mean altitude over squares of dimensions 
								  approximately 3x3km^2, 10x10km^2 and 
								  30x30km^2, centred on each station. These
								  values, along with all of the remaining 
								  site attributes, were derived from the 
								  GTOPO30 dataset.
								. Standard deviations of altitudes over squares  
								  of dimensions approximately 3x3km^2, 10x10km^2  
								  and 30x30km^2, centred on each station. These
								  can be regarded as measures of topographic 
								  variability for the different stations.
								. East-West slopes computed over squares  
								  of dimensions approximately 3x3km^2, 10x10km^2  
								  and 30x30km^2, centred on each station. These 
								  were produced by regressing the mapped altitudes
								  on the longitude co-ordinates within these squares,
								  and converting the regression slope to units of
								  (hundreds of metres' altitude change) per km. 
								. North-South slopes, similarly. 
								The file can be read into R using read.table().
								See StartupScript.r for an example.
  - stations_northIberia.pdf	A PDF map of the region, with the stations
								marked on it. The ones marked in red are
								those that have "officially" been selected
								for inclusion in the 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. 
  - TerrainMap.jpg				Map of study area showing the topography as
								recorded in the GTOPO30 database (see stations.dat
								above for more detail), together with station 
								locations. This file also plots the recorded
								station altitudes against the mapped values, 
								as a way of checking the accuracy of the GTOPO30
								information (and my coding in combining the datasets!).
								A pdf version is also available. 
								

													Richard Chandler
													 15th November 2012
