A climate service for ecologists: sharing pre-processed EURO-CORDEX regional climate scenario data using the eLTER Information System

Abstract

eLTER was a “Horizon 2020” project with the aim of advancing the development of long-term ecosystem research infrastructure in Europe. This paper describes how eLTER Information System infrastructure has been expanded by a climate service data product providing access to specifically pre-processed regional climate change scenario data from a state-of-the-art regional climate model ensemble of the Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) for 702 registered ecological research sites across Europe. This tailored, expandable, easily accessible dataset follows FAIR principles and allows researchers to describe the climate at these sites, explore future projections for different climate change scenarios and make regional climate change assessments and impact studies. The data for each site are available for download from the EUDAT collaborative data infrastructure B2SHARE service and can be easily accessed and visualised through the Dynamic Ecological Information Management System – Site and Dataset Registry (DEIMS-SDR), a web-based information management system which shares detailed information and metadata on ecological research sites around the globe. This paper describes these data and how they can be accessed by users through the extended eLTER Information System architecture. The data and supporting information are available from B2SHARE. Each individual site (702 sites are available) dataset has its own DOI. To aid data discovery, a persistent B2SHARE lookup table has been created which matches the DOIs of the individual B2SHARE record with each DEIMS site ID. This lookup table is available at https://doi.org/10.23728/b2share.bf41278d91b445bda4505d5b1eaac26c (eLTER EURO-CORDEX Climate Service, 2020).