Reliability of the ERA5 in Replicating Mean and Extreme Temperatures across Europe

Abstract

ERA5 is widely considered as a valid proxy of observation at region scales. Surface air temperature from the E-OBS database and 196 meteorological stations across Europe are being applied for evaluation of the fifth-generation ECMWF reanalysis ERA5 temperature data in the period of 1981–2010. In general, ERA5 captures the mean and extreme temperatures very well and ERA5 is reliable for climate investigation over Europe. High correlations ranging from 0.995 to 1.000 indicate that ERA5 could capture the annual cycle very well. However, the high mean biases and high Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) for some European sub-regions (e.g., the Alps, the Mediterranean) reveal that ERA5 underestimates temperatures. The biases can be mainly attributed to the altitude differences between ERA5 grid points and stations. Comparing ERA5 with the other two datasets, ERA5 temperature presents more extreme temperature and small outliers for regions southern of 40° latitude and less extreme temperatures in areas over the Black Sea. In Scandinavia, ERA5 temperatures are more frequently extreme than the observational ones.