ECMWF contribution to the EU funded CHARME Project: a significant events database covering the 111 years period of ERA-CLIM

The EU funded CHARMe project (“Characterization of metadata to allow high-quality climate applications and services”) addresses the major difficulty faced by users of climate data when judging whether data are fit for purpose, by introducing the concept of 'Commentary' metadata.

One of the products of ECMWF's ERA-CLIM reanalysis project is the 100 years Observation Feedback Archive which contains all the earth observations processed by the reanalysis, as well as, for each of them, feedback information generated by the data assimilation system. This information will be complemented with a database of significant events, such as volcanic eruptions, the launch of new satellites or El Niño phases. A web-based graphical tool will be developed that will allow users to interactively browse and visualise time series of feedback data with their associated events. This would allow users to become more familiar with the variety of observations that feed into the reanalysis, and to determine whether the variability and features seen in the dataset were likely to be artefacts of the measurement or processing steps, or real changes in the environment.