Identification

Title

Standardised Precipitation Index time series for Integrated Hydrological Units Hydrometric Areas (1961-2012)

Abstract

Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) data for Integrated Hydrological Units (IHU) Hydrometric Areas (Kral et al. [1]). SPI is a drought index based on the probability of precipitation for a given accumulation period as defined by McKee et al. [2]. SPI is calculated for different accumulation periods: 1, 3, 6, 12, 18, 24 months. Each of these is in turn calculated for each of the twelve calendar months. Note that values in monthly (and for longer accumulation periods also annual) time series of the data therefore are likely to be autocorrelated. The standard period which was used to fit the gamma distribution is 1961-2010. The dataset covers the period from 1961 to 2012. [1] Kral, F., Fry, M., Dixon, H. (2015). Integrated Hydrological Units of the United Kingdom: Hydrometric Areas without Coastline. NERC-Environmental Information Data Centre doi:10.5285/3a4e94fc-4c68-47eb-a217-adee2a6b02b3 [2] McKee, T. B., Doesken, N. J., Kleist, J. (1993). The Relationship of Drought Frequency and Duration to Time Scales. Eighth Conference on Applied Climatology, 17-22 January 1993, Anaheim, California. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/5e1792a0-ae95-4e77-bccd-2fb456112cc1

Resource type

dataset

Resource locator

https://data-package.ceh.ac.uk/data/5e1792a0-ae95-4e77-bccd-2fb456112cc1

description: Download a copy of this data

function: download

https://data-package.ceh.ac.uk/sd/5e1792a0-ae95-4e77-bccd-2fb456112cc1.zip

description: Supporting information available to assist in re-use of this dataset.

function: information

Unique resource identifier

code

1431704829276

codeSpace

CEH:EIDC:

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Meteorological geographical features

originating controlled vocabulary

title

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2008-06-01

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

-7.557

East bounding longitude

3.554

North bounding latitude

61.026

South bounding latitude

49.766

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

1961-01-01

End position

2012-12-31

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2015-05-22

date type

creation

effective date

2015-05-14

Frequency of update

notPlanned

Quality and validity

Lineage

SPI is calculated as originally defined in McKee et al. [1]. SPI is based on the cumulative probability of a given rainfall amount occurring at a location. The historic rainfall data of the station is fitted to a statistical distribution. For this dataset, the statistical distribution used is the gamma distribution, which has been extensively used and is recommended as a default choice for Europe by Stagge et al. [2]. The L-moments method was used to estimate the gamma distribution parameters, as the maximum likehood method was failing to fit a realistic distribution in some isolated cases (more details on the choice of methodology in Tanguy et al. [3]). To calculate SPI, the R package SCI was used (Gudmundsson & Stagge [4]), but modified to use L-moments (instead of Maximum Likelihood). The input data used is the monthly rainfall grids from CEH-Gridded Estimates of Areal Rainfall [CEH-GEAR] (Tanguy et al. [5], Keller et al. [6]) which has been area-averaged over each of the Integrated Hydrological Units (IHU) Hydrometric Areas (Kral et al. [7]). [1] McKee, T. B., Doesken, N. J., Kleist, J. (1993). The Relationship of Drought Frequency and Duration to Time Scales. Eighth Conference on Applied Climatology, 17-22 January 1993, Anaheim, California. [2] Stagge, J. H., Tallaksen, L. M., Gudmundsson, L., Van Loon, A. F. and Stahl, K. (2015), Candidate Distributions for Climatological Drought Indices (SPI and SPEI). Int. J. Climatol. doi: 10.1002/joc.4267 [3] Tanguy et al. (2015), in preparation. [4] Gudmundsson, L. & Stagge, J. H. (2014). Package 'SCI': Standardized Climate Indices such as SPI, SRI or SPEI. Repository CRAN, http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/SCI/SCI.pdf [5] Tanguy, M., Dixon, H., Prosdocimi, I., Morris, D. G., Keller, V. D. J. (2014). Gridded estimates of daily and monthly areal rainfall for the United Kingdom (1890-2012) [CEH-GEAR]. NERC-Environmental Information Data Centre doi:10.5285/5dc179dc-f692-49ba-9326-a6893a503f6e [6] Keller,V. D. J., Tanguy, M. , Prosdocimi, I. , Terry, J. A. , Hitt, O., Cole, S. J. , Fry, M., Morris, D. G., Dixon, H. (2015) CEH-GEAR: 1km resolution daily and monthly areal rainfall estimates for the UK for hydrological use. Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., 8, 83-112, www.earth-syst-sci-data-discuss.net/8/83/2015/ doi:10.5194/essdd-8-83-2015. [7] Kral, F., Fry, M., Dixon, H. (2015). Integrated Hydrological Units of the United Kingdom: Hydrometric Areas without Coastline. NERC-Environmental Information Data Centre doi:10.5285/3a4e94fc-4c68-47eb-a217-adee2a6b02b3

Conformity

Conformity report

specification

title

Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

organisation name

full postal address

Lancaster Environment Centre, Library Avenue, Bailrigg

Lancaster

LA1 4AP

email address

info@eidc.ac.uk

web address

https://eidc.ac.uk/

description: The Environmental Information Data Centre (EIDC) is the UK's national data centre for terrestrial and freshwater sciences.

function: information

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2025-03-21T13:21:57

Metadata language

eng