A dataset for predicting cloud cover over Europe

Hanna Svennevik; Steven A Hicks; Michael A Riegler; Trude Storelvmo; Hugo L Hammer

doi:10.1038/s41597-024-03062-0

A dataset for predicting cloud cover over Europe

Sci Data. 2024 Feb 27;11(1):245. doi: 10.1038/s41597-024-03062-0.

Authors

Hanna Svennevik¹, Steven A Hicks², Michael A Riegler^{2

3}, Trude Storelvmo¹, Hugo L Hammer^{4

5}

Affiliations

¹ University of Oslo, Department of Geosciences, 0315, Oslo, Norway.
² Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Department of Holistic Systems, Pilestredet 52, 0167, Oslo, Norway.
³ OsloMet - Oslo Metropolitan University, Department of Computer Science, Pilestredet 52, 0167, Oslo, Norway.
⁴ Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering, Department of Holistic Systems, Pilestredet 52, 0167, Oslo, Norway. hugo.hammer@oslomet.no.
⁵ OsloMet - Oslo Metropolitan University, Department of Computer Science, Pilestredet 52, 0167, Oslo, Norway. hugo.hammer@oslomet.no.

Abstract

Clouds are important factors when projecting future climate. Unfortunately, future cloud fractional cover (the portion of the sky covered by clouds) is associated with significant uncertainty, making climate projections difficult. In this paper, we present the European Cloud Cover dataset, which can be used to learn statistical relations between cloud cover and other environmental variables, to potentially improve future climate projections. The dataset was created using a novel technique called Area Weighting Regridding Scheme to map satellite observations to cloud fractional cover on the same grid as the other variables in the dataset. Baseline experiments using autoregressive models document that it is possible to use the dataset to predict cloud fractional cover.

Publication types

Dataset