Evaluating E-OBS, AgERA5, MARS-STAT, ERA5, and ERA5-Land for Daily Minimum and Maximum Temperature Across Four Mediterranean European Countries
Abstract
Gridded-dataset suitability varies by support, season, variable, and application. This study evaluated E-OBS, AgERA5, MARS-STAT/JRC Agri4Cast, ERA5, and ERA5-Land against observations from 624 European Climate Assessment & Dataset (ECA&D) and Hellenic National Meteorological Service (HNMS/EMY) stations, using 18.18 million source-station-day records containing minimum (TN) and maximum (TX) temperatures. Derived variables included mean temperature (Tmean), diurnal temperature range (DTR), and growing degree days (GDD). Identical-support rankings and station bootstraps assessed daily and GDD performance; Fisher's z transformation summarized seasonal correlations; temporal and network tests screened trends. E-OBS minimized daily and monthly-climatology-removed anomaly root mean square error (RMSE) for TN, TX, Tmean, and DTR in all 16 country-variable comparisons. With at least 10 matched years, E-OBS led 42 of 64 seasonal RMSE comparisons and 59 of 64 correlation comparisons; MARS-STAT/JRC Agri4Cast led the remaining 22 and five, respectively. E-OBS minimized GDD RMSE in Spain and Italy, whereas MARS-STAT/JRC Agri4Cast led in Greece and narrowly led in France. GDD RMSE equaled 3.3-7.2% of observed mean GDD. Robustness tests supported increases in Spanish annual DTR, French annual TX, and French growing-season GDD. The lapse-rate correction improved 22 of 40 comparisons but usually worsened TN. Dataset choice should reflect support, variable, season, terrain, and application.
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BibTeX
@misc{voulanas2026evaluating,
title = {{Evaluating E-OBS, AgERA5, MARS-STAT, ERA5, and ERA5-Land for Daily Minimum and Maximum Temperature Across Four Mediterranean European Countries}},
author = {Dimitrios Voulanas},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.13193},
eprint = {2609.13193},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.13193},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Evaluating E-OBS, AgERA5, MARS-STAT, ERA5, and ERA5-Land for Daily Minimum and Maximum Temperature Across Four Mediterranean European Countries
AU - Dimitrios Voulanas
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/01
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.13193
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.13193
AB - Gridded-dataset suitability varies by support, season, variable, and application. This study evaluated E-OBS, AgERA5, MARS-STAT/JRC Agri4Cast, ERA5, and ERA5-Land against observations from 624 European Climate Assessment & Dataset (ECA&D) and Hellenic National Meteorological Service (HNMS/EMY) stations, using 18.18 million source-station-day records containing minimum (TN) and maximum (TX) temperatures. Derived variables included mean temperature (Tmean), diurnal temperature range (DTR), and growing degree days (GDD). Identical-support rankings and station bootstraps assessed daily and GDD performance; Fisher's z transformation summarized seasonal correlations; temporal and network tests screened trends. E-OBS minimized daily and monthly-climatology-removed anomaly root mean square error (RMSE) for TN, TX, Tmean, and DTR in all 16 country-variable comparisons. With at least 10 matched years, E-OBS led 42 of 64 seasonal RMSE comparisons and 59 of 64 correlation comparisons; MARS-STAT/JRC Agri4Cast led the remaining 22 and five, respectively. E-OBS minimized GDD RMSE in Spain and Italy, whereas MARS-STAT/JRC Agri4Cast led in Greece and narrowly led in France. GDD RMSE equaled 3.3-7.2% of observed mean GDD. Robustness tests supported increases in Spanish annual DTR, French annual TX, and French growing-season GDD. The lapse-rate correction improved 22 of 40 comparisons but usually worsened TN. Dataset choice should reflect support, variable, season, terrain, and application.
ER -