SLOCLIM: A high-resolution daily gridded precipitation and temperature dataset for Slovenia

Abstract

Abstract. We present a new publicly available daily gridded dataset of maximum and minimum temperature and precipitation data covering the whole territory of Slovenia from 1950 to 2018. It represents the great variability of climate at the crossroads between the Mediterranean, Alpine and continental climatic regimes with altitudes between 0–2864 m a.s.l. We completely reconstructed (quality control and gap filling) the data for the three variables from 174 observatories (climatological, precipitation and automatic stations) with the original records all over the country. A comprehensive quality control process based on the spatial coherence of the data was applied to the original dataset, and the missing values were estimated for each day and location independently. Using the filled data series, a grid of 1 × 1 km spatial resolution with 20,998 points was created by estimating daily temperatures (minimum and maximum) and precipitation, and their corresponding uncertainties at each grid point. In order to show the potential applications, four daily temperature indices and two on precipitation were calculated to describe the spatial distribution of: 1) the absolute maximum and minimum temperature; 2) the number of frost days; 3) the number of summer days; 4) the intensity of precipitation; and 5) the maximum number of consecutive dry days. The use of all the available information, the complete quality control and the high spatial resolution of the grid allowed for an accurate estimate of precipitation and temperature that represents a precise spatial and temporal distribution of daily temperatures and precipitation in Slovenia. The SLOCLIM dataset is publicly available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4108543 and can be cited as Škrk et al. (2020).