What is the European Climate Data Explorer?

The European Climate Data Explorer (ECDE) provides interactive access to selected climate variables and indices from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).

What are climate indices and indicators?

The terminology concerning climate indices and indicators differs, with no consistent definitions in the literature. Climate indices generally refer to the diagnostic quantity of one or several meteorological and/or hydrological variables including possible thresholds, for different temporal and spatial aggregations (cf. Kjellström et al., 2016), whereas indicators refer to the function of a variable to represent a phenomenon (cf. Hinkel, 2011), such as climate change hazards, impacts or vulnerabilities. Climate indices can be used as indicators to understand phenomena and to support adaptation planning and decision making (Dubois et al., 2016, WMO, 2014), and in such cases their definitions are the same. However, a climate index is not intuitively or necessarily an indicator.

Who developed the climate indices of the ECDE?

The indices available on the ECDE were identified by a selected group of experts that defined publication priorities and presented in a technical report in 2020 (ETC/CCA Technical Paper). The indices were organised according to 16 hazards, grouped into 6 categories consistent with the 'climatic impact drivers' adopted in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report.

To whom are the ECDE indices intended for ?

The primary target audience of the ECDE is the same as Climate-ADAPT: governmental adaptation decision makers at all governance levels in Europe and organisations supporting them. Please check the Climate Adapt Outreach and Dissemination page for more.

Where does the ECDE index data come from ?

The index data was assembled on behalf of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) based on climate projections hosted on the C3S Climate Data Store (CDS). The computation of the index (i.e calculation when necessary and spatial/temporal averaging) is performed by a public visualisation application developed with the CDS Toolbox using the CDS hosted data.

How reliable are the data presented on the ECDE ?

The index data are provided by Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and hosted on Climate Data Store (CDS). C3S is the authoritative climate data source of the European Union. Check for example the C3S regular climate bulletins that present the current climate conditions using key climate change indicators.

What quality control and homogeneity procedures are applied ?

Both the underlying datasets and the visualisation application undergo quality control procedures that are presented in the corresponding data/app pages on the Climate Data Store (CDS). Moreover, both the underlying data, as any data hosted on the CDS, and the application code, are made available publicly. In this way both the calculations and the data are fully traceable.

How do I get additional help ?

For any help inquiries please check the ECDE help page. To submit your own question about the indices appearing on the ECDE to the ECDE maintainers and the wider C3S user check the ECDE Forum.

How do I get help on technical terms ?

For definitions of technical terms please refer to the ECDE glossary.

How do I use the ECDE indices ?

Please check the Outreach and Dissemination page Outreach and Dissemination page where you will find dissemination materials, tutorial videos, inspiring examples, events and webinars, as well as country specific promotion activities.