High-resolution atmospheric reconstruction for Europe 1948–2012: coastDat2

Abstract. The coastDat data sets were produced to give a consistent and homogeneous database mainly for assessing weather statistics and climate changes since 1948, e.g., in frequencies of extremes for Europe, especially in data sparse regions. A sequence of numerical models was employed to reconstruct all aspects of marine climate (such as storms, waves, surges, etc.) over many decades. The acronym coastDat stands for the set of consistent ocean and atmospheric data, where the atmospheric data where used as forcing for the reconstruction of the sea state. Here, we describe the atmospheric part of coastDat2 (Geyer and Rockel, 2013; doi:10.1594/WDCC/coastDat-2_COSMO-CLM). It consists of a regional climate reconstruction for the entire European continent, including the Baltic Sea and North Sea and parts of the Atlantic. The simulation was done for 1948 to 2012 with the regional climate model COSMO-CLM (CCLM) and a horizontal grid size of 0.22 degree in rotated coordinates. Global reanalysis data of NCEP1 were used as forcing and spectral nudging was applied. To meet the demands on the coastDat data set about 70 variables are stored hourly.