Our climate risk intelligence relies on the highest quality dynamic data
After reading this article, you will learn:
The first step in developing high-quality climate risk intelligence is sourcing and incorporating the best available dynamic climate data. We source two main types of data - asset data and climate science data. This article explores climate science data.
How is climate data ingested into our models?
All climate-related data ingested into our climate models or incorporated as part of our validation processes comes from peer-reviewed research or qualified industry sources.
Global climate data is imported into our databases for preprocessing to account for resolution differences and inconsistencies such as missing days in weather station data. This preprocessing transforms all raw data into a more versatile format for modeling and scientific computing.
What are the sources of Signal Data?
Based on EarthScan's modeling frameworks, signals fall into two categories: atmospheric signals and flooding signals.
Atmospheric signals (Heat Stress, Extreme Precipitation, Wind Risk, Drought and Wildfire) are generated using the Multiple Futures Model.
Flooding signals (Coastal and Riverine Flooding) are generated using our flood modeling framework.
Atmospheric Signal Data
All atmospheric signal data products make use of:
- Selected CMIP6 model data, with development coordinated and promoted by the World Climate Research Programme through the Working Group on Coupled Modeling.
- ERA5: Fifth generation of ECMWF atmospheric reanalyses of the global climate including modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information, 2022 and modified Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service information, 2022.
- NASA GDDP: signals contain modified data from the NASA Global Daily Downscaled Projections model.
In addition, the Extreme Wind signal makes uses of:
- Regional climate model data from the COordinated Regional Downscaling EXperiment (CORDEX). These data provide better resolution of topographic features such as coastlines, valleys, and mountain ranges than global climate models by using grid boxes smaller than 25km.
- The International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) global tropical storm observational dataset (version 4).
- Wind gust observations from over 90,000 stations across the globe from the Global Historical Climate Network-daily (GHCN-d) dataset.
In addition, the Wildfire signal makes use of
- The Fire Weather Index. This dataset is produced by ECMWF in its role as the computational center for fire danger forecast of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS), on behalf of the Joint Research Centre which is the managing entity of the service. The data set contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2022 and modified Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service information 2022.
- European Space Agency (ESA) WorldCover 2020: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020) processed by ESA WorldCover consortium.
Flooding Signal Data
All Flooding data products make use of:
- Copernicus GLO-30 and Copernicus GLO-90 coastal terrain elevation model data.
The Riverine Flooding data product makes use of:
- Copernicus ERA-5 Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS) - reanalysis data representing recent hydrological activity with a hydrological model driven with ERA5 meteorology.
- Copernicus historical river discharge data under the CEMS-FLOODS datasets license.
- ISIMIP daily discharge data across a number of climate model and hydrological model simulations licensed under CC-BY-4.0.
- HydroLakes, licensed by the authors under a CC-BY-4.0 license.
The Coastal Flooding data product makes use of:
- European Commission Joint Research Centre’s (JRC) Global Surface Water dataset, produced under the Copernicus program
- GPS station velocities provided by the Nevada Geodetic Laboratory
- IPCC AR6 Sea-Level Rise Projections, licensed by the authors under a Creative Commons 4.0 International License
- COAST-RP: A global Coastal dataset of Storm Tide Return Periods dataset, licensed by the authors under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
How often is EarthScan's data updated?
The breadth, integrity and dynamism of our data is core to creating on-demand climate risk intelligence at the highest possible resolution. We continually refine, update and add to our data, and integrate asset-level information as soon as it is available.
We are continually incorporating the latest release of these datasets and incorporating new datasets where appropriate, ensuring that EarthScan™ is always drawing on the most up-to-date climate data.