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WATCH Forcing Data (WFD) - 20th Century Rainf GPCC (Rainfall GPCC) 1901-2001

The WATCH forcing data (WFD) is a twentieth century meteorological forcing dataset for land surface and hydrological models. It consists of three/six-hourly states of the weather for global half-degree land grid points. It was generated as part of the EU FP 6 project "WATCH" (WATer and global CHange") which ran from 2007-2011. The data was generated in 2 tranches with slightly different methodology: 1901-1957 and 1958-2001, but generally the dataset can be considered as continuous. More details

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What's in it

Data offered docs-verified
Rainfall rate (Rainf), GPCC bias- and undercatch-corrected, kg/m2/s, 3-hourly
Coverage docs-verified
Global land grid points (half-degree), excluding Antarctica · 1900-12-01 to 2002-01-31
Resolution docs-verified
0.5 x 0.5 degrees spatial; 3-hourly temporal
Formats docs-verified
NetCDF
Access docs-verified
Licence terms apply (Non-Open Government Licence per catalogue metadata); scripted download needs a personal access token (Bearer) from the EIDC

Useful for

Use cases llm-inferred
Historic rainfall forcing for long-run hydrological model calibration where gauged records are sparse · Regional 20th-century water balance or drought reconstruction for catchment context · Rainfall input for land surface or reference evaporation studies in climate-impact assessments
Audience llm-inferred
hydrologists · water resources engineers · climate and land surface modellers · flood consultants

Limitations

Constraints docs-verified
Rainfall only; must be combined with WFD snowfall datasets to obtain total precipitation · Derived from ERA-40 reanalysis with interpolation and bias correction; intended for modelling where good observations are not readily available · Only the GPCC variant is available from the EIDC (no CRU-corrected rainfall) · Land points only; Antarctica excluded · Generated in two tranches with slightly different methods (1901-1957 and 1958-2001) · Access requires accepting the licence and a personal access token for scripted download · Publications must cite doi:10.1175/2011JHM1369.1
Licence
Non-Open government licence
Authentication
Unknown — review source docs
GitHub stars
Unknown
Last commit
Unknown
Last successful page check
16/10/2026
Page health
healthy
Package
Not recorded
Verification
Not independently verified

Provenance & evidence

Listed in ukceh-eidc public catalogue API on 2026-10-16; relevance/value screened (haiku).

Metadata observed 14/10/2026 · research sweep: sweep-2026-10-16 (ukceh-eidc)