ClimateForecasts: Globally Observed Environmental Data for 15,504 Weather Station Locations

ClimateForecasts is a database that provides environmental data for 15,504 weather station locations and 49 environmental variables, including 38 bioclimatic variables, 8 soil variables and 3 topographic variables. Data were extracted from the same 30 arc-seconds global grid layers that were prepared when making the TreeGOER (Tree Globally Observed Environmental Ranges) database that is available from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7922927. Details on the preparations of these layers are provided by Kindt, R. (2023). TreeGOER: A database with globally observed environmental ranges for 48,129 tree species. Global Change Biology, 00, 1–16. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.16914. A similar extraction process was used for the CitiesGOER database that is also available from Zenodo via https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.8175429.

ClimateForecasts (as the CitiesGOER) was designed to be used together with TreeGOER and possibly also with the GlobalUsefulNativeTrees database (Kindt et al. 2023) to allow users to filter suitable tree species based on environmental conditions of the planting site. One example of combining data from these different sets in the R statistical environment is available from this Rpub: https://rpubs.com/Roeland-KINDT/1114902.

The identities including the geographical coordinates of weather stations were sourced from Meteostat, specifically by downloading (17-FEB-2024) the ‘lite dump’ data set with information for active weather stations only. Two weather stations where the country could not be determined from the ISO 3166-1 code of ‘XA’ were removed. If weather stations had the same name, but occurred in different ISO 3166-2 regions, this region code was added to the name of the weather station between square brackets. Afterwards duplicates (weather stations of the same name and region) were manually removed.

Bioclimatic variables for future climates correspond to the median values from 24 Global Climate Models (GCMs) for Shared Socio-Economic Pathway (SSP) 1-2.6 for the 2050s (2041-2060), from 21 GCMs for SSP 3-7.0 for the 2050s and from 13 GCMs for SSP 5-8.5 for the 2090s. Similar methods were used to calculate these median values as in the case studies for the TreeGOER manuscript (calculations were partially done via the BiodiversityR::ensemble.envirem.run function and with downscaled bioclimatic and monthly climate 2.5 arc-minutes future grid layers available from WorldClim 2.1).

Maps were added in version 2024.03 where locations of weather stations were shown on a map of the Climatic Moisture Index (CMI). These maps were created by a similar process as in the TreeGOER Global Zones Atlas from the environmental raster layers used to create the TreeGOER via the terra package (Hijmans et al. 2022, version 1.7-46) in the R 4.2.1 environment. Added country boundaries were obtained from Natural Earth as Admin 0 – countries vector layers (version 5.1.1). Also added after obtaining them from Natural Earth were Admin 0 – Breakaway, Disputed areas (version 5.1.0, coloured yellow in the atlas) and Roads (version 5.0.0, coloured red in the atlas). For countries where the GlobalUsefulNativeTrees database included subnational levels, boundaries were added and depicted as dot-dash lines. These subnational levels correspond to level 3 boundaries in the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions. These were obtained from https://github.com/tdwg/wgsrpd. Check Brummit 2001 for details such as the maps shown at the end of this document.

Maps for version 2024.07 modified the dimensions of the sheets to those used in version 2024.06 of the TreeGOER Global Zones Atlas. Another modification was the inclusion of Natural Earth boundaries for Lakes (version 5.0.0, coloured darkblue in the atlas).

When using ClimateForecasts in your work, cite this depository and the following:

·         Fick, S. E., & Hijmans, R. J. (2017). WorldClim 2: New 1‐km spatial resolution climate surfaces for global land areas. International Journal of Climatology, 37(12), 4302–4315. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.5086

·         Title, P. O., & Bemmels, J. B. (2018). ENVIREM: An expanded set of bioclimatic and topographic variables increases flexibility and improves performance of ecological niche modeling. Ecography, 41(2), 291–307. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.02880

·         Poggio, L., de Sousa, L. M., Batjes, N. H., Heuvelink, G. B. M., Kempen, B., Ribeiro, E., & Rossiter, D. (2021). SoilGrids 2.0: Producing soil information for the globe with quantified spatial uncertainty. SOIL, 7(1), 217–240. https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-7-217-2021

·         Kindt, R. (2023). TreeGOER: A database with globally observed environmental ranges for 48,129 tree species. Global Change Biology, 00, 1–16. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.16914.

·         Meteostat (2024) Weather stations: Lite dump with active weather stations. https://github.com/meteostat/weather-stations (accessed 17-FEB-2024)

The development of ClimateForecasts and its partial integration in version 2024.03 of the GlobalUsefulNativeTrees database was supported by the Darwin Initiative to project DAREX001 of Developing a Global Biodiversity Standard certification for tree-planting and restoration, by Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative through the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Ethiopia to the Provision of Adequate Tree Seed Portfolio project in Ethiopia, by the Green Climate Fund through the IUCN-led Transforming the Eastern Province of Rwanda through Adaptation project and through the Readiness proposal on Climate Appropriate Portfolios of Tree Diversity for Burkina Faso, by the Bezos Earth Fund to the Bezos Quality Tree Seed for Africa in Kenya and Rwanda project and by the German International Climate Initiative (IKI) to the regional tree seed programme on The Right Tree for the Right Place for the Right Purpose in Africa.