Contributors: The Climate Data Factory and B-Open
Issued by: The Climate Data Factory
Issued Date: May 2024
Ref: C3S3_430a – ECDE maintenance and development
Official reference number service contract: 2021/C3S2_430a_BOPEN
Introduction
The European Climate Data Explorer (ECDE) indicator visualisation application (referred to as ECDE application hereafter) is a web application of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) allowing for flexible temporal and spatial exploration and analysis of recent past trends and projected future changes of a range of key climate indicators from multiple datasets.
The development of the ECDE application was driven by the European Environment Agency (EEA) to address informational needs regarding climate impact indicators relevant to climate change adaptation national initiatives across the EU. The list of indicators is based on a technical report from the European Topic Centre on Climate Change Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation (ETC-CCA).
This document describes the application interface.
Application interface
The application interface is made of three adjacent panels (Figure 1). On the left (Fig. 1A), the selection panel displays a drop down menu for indicator selection followed by buttons for visualisation options and data download. In the centre (Fig. 1B), the interactive map panel with a selection of regional boundaries, and on the right (Fig. 1C) the plot panel displaying interactive plots corresponding to spatial averages over the region selected on the interactive map. The right panel appears once a region is selected in the interactive map and both side panels can be hidden by clicking on the grey bars in the separations between panels. By default, the application displays the Mean temperature index.
Figure 1: Application panels with the selection panel on the left (A), interactive map panel in the centre (B) and plots on the right (C).
The user can interact with the application in each panel:
- By selecting the indicator (Fig. 1.1), see background information through the Information tooltip (Fig. 1.2), select visualisation options (Fig. 1.3) and eventually download the data (Fig. 1.4).
- By taking a screenshot of the panel (Fig. 1.5), see attribution information (Fig. 1.6), zooming in and out using the zoom buttons (Fig. 1.7), hide or show the map legend (Fig. 1.8), selecting a type of region (Fig. 1.9), and by clicking on a region of the map to activate the right panel and show the corresponding plots.
- By hovering over the plots in the right panel (Fig. 1C) to see plot values
Selection panel
The first and major item in the selections panel is the indicator selection dropdown menu: it lists the indicators as “radio buttons” that can be displayed altogether or filtered by Climatic Impact Driver (CID) category (heat and cold, wet and dry, wind and radiation, snow and ice, ocean, and circulation) to simplify the selection through a filter menu on the left (Fig. 2).
Figure 2: Drop down menu listing the indicators as “radio buttons” that can be displayed altogether or filtered by Climatic Impact Driver (CID) category.
An important feature is the Information tooltip positioned on the left of the Indicator drop-down menu. By clicking on it, an information box will pop-up to give background information on the selected indicator (Fig. 3). The background information is composed of four elements: context, definition, data sources, and supporting information.
Figure 3: Tooltip information box with background information for each indicator.
The dropdown menu is followed by a series of display selection buttons:
- The region selection buttons: NUTS is a Eurostat hierarchical system for dividing the territory of the EU and the UK, Transnational regions are used by the EEA, and Europe zones are the number of countries considered for the European domain (27 EU countries, 32 EEA member countries and 38 EEA member and cooperating countries). Choices are “NUTS”, “Transnational regions” or “Europe zones”. Oceanic and coastal indicators will not have this feature.
- The time span selection buttons: the calendar period over which the displayed data is temporally averaged. Choices are “Year”, “Season” or “Month”. When “Season” or “Month” are selected a dropdown menu appears just below to further specify the season (winter, spring, summer or autumn) or the month (one of the 12 calendar months) respectively.
- The scenario selection buttons: scenarios are descriptions of how the future may develop along the 21st century covering a range of pathways determining possible climate futures. Choices are “RCP4.5” or “RCP8.5” for IPCC AR5 based datasets and “SSP2-4.5” and “SSP5-8.5” for IPCC AR6 based dataset s.
- The time horizon selection buttons: the time period over which the displayed data is averaged considering different future periods in the 21st century. Choices are typically 30-year periods that cover historical (1981-2010), near-future (2011-2040), mid-future (2041-2070) and far-future (2071-2100) conditions. When the data used for a given time horizon is derived from reanalyses the "Scenario" buttons are deactivated.
- The map type selection buttons: the map values can be displayed either as “Climatology” (temporal averages over the selected time horizon) or “Change from 1981-2010”, 1981-2010 being the historical baseline period used in the application. The change magnitude is computed for each grid point as the arithmetic difference between the climatology in the two time periods.
Some indicators have specific configurations appearing in dedicated selection features (Fig. 4) and are listed below:
- Region (Extreme sea level): ocean or seas surrounding the European continent. Choices are “Atlantic ocean”, “Baltic sea”, or “Mediterranean”.
- Threshold selection buttons (Hot Days): the daily maximum temperature used for the calculation of the indicator. Choices are 30°C, 35°C, and 40°C.
- Threshold dropdown menu: (High Snow Days): the water equivalent of natural snow used for the calculation of the indicator. Choices are 120 kg m-1 or 100 kg m-1.
- Altitude dropdown menu (High Snow Days): the elevation at which the index is calculated. Choices are from 0m to 3000m with 500m increments.
- Flood recurrence selection buttons (Flood recurrence): the return period in years for which the flood recurrence is calculated. Choices are 2 years, 5 years, 10 years or 50 years.
- Hydrological model selection buttons (Flood Recurrence, River Discharge, Aridity Actual, Mean Soil Moisture): the hydrological model for which the data is displayed. Choices are E-Hypegrid, Vic-WUR or both.
- Category selection buttons (Marine Heatwaves): the intensity category of the Marine heatwave (see background information). Choices are from 1 to 6.
- Depth dropdown menu (Ocean pH Level, Dissolved Oxygen Level): the ocean depth of the index value. Choices are from 0.5m, 10m, 20m, 50m and 100 to 1000m in 100m increments, and 2000 m.
Finally there is a Download button to download the map data as a csv file when the data displayed on the map is regional and as a netcdf file when it is gridded.
Figure 4: Examples of specific buttons of some indicators: Flood recurrence periods (left) with flood recurrence period and hydrological models selection buttons , PH ocean depth levels dropdown menu (right).
Interactive map
Figure 5: The region selection options according to the three types of regions (NUTS, Transnational regions, and Europe zones).
The map displays three types of administrative boundaries over the continent: NUTS, transnational regions and Europe zones. NUTS ( Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics ) is a hierarchical system for dividing the territory of the EU and the UK maintained by Eurostat (see their NUTS documentation page). The application uses NUTS regions ranging from NUTS0 (country) to NUTS2 (sub-country). The Transnational regions used by the EEA are defined by a EU initiative, known as Interreg B , allowing for cooperation over larger transnational territories or around sea basins in Europe to promote better cooperation and regional development. Europe zones are the number of countries considered for the European domain (the 27 EU countries , and the 32 EEA member countries and 38 EEA member and cooperating countries ).
For oceanic and coastal regions, the map displays oceanic and sea regions depending on the constraints of the underlying data (see Figure 4). Not all seas (Baltick, North Sea, or Black Sea) are always covered.
Figure 6: The oceanic and sea regions display depends on the underlying data constraints. For example, Sea Surface temperature covers the surrounding ocean and seas (left), PH level doesn’t cover the Baltic and Black seas (centre), and Extreme sea level can show only one region at a time depending on the region selection button, here Mediterranean (right).
Plot panel
The right panel shows a series of plots displaying spatially averaged trends and projections once a region is selected in the interactive map of the central panel. More details about those plots is given in the next section.
There are two types of plot groups in the left panel: standard and custom. Standard plots are common to the majority indicators and include a group of four plots that show trends and projections for the selected administrative region. However, some indicators will display a reduced number of standard plots depending on the underlying data set specifications. The second type of plots is custom plots which are used when the underlying data specifications of some indicators do not allow the generation of the standard plots. The next two sections give more details about standard and custom plots.
Standard plots
The standard plots is a group of four plots that are described below by taking as example the mean temperature indicator.
Historical anomalies
The historical anomaly time series interactive plot shows the annual evolution of the index anomalies from 1940 to now. The “anomaly” is simply the difference from average conditions defined as the 30 year mean over the reference period (1981-2010). Warmer than average conditions appear as positive values (red), and respectively, colder than average appear as negative values (blue). This plot provides a first insight on the trend of the index over the last 60 years and a way to evaluate patterns of evolution over the last decades (Fig. 7).
Figure 7: Historical variations time series plot.
Historical and projection evolution
The climate projection interactive plot shows the evolution of the index from 1940 to 2100 according to climate projections under the two emission scenarios (plain line, RCP8.5 in orange and RCP4.5 in green, Fig. 8). To give a sense of the uncertainty inherent to the projected range of values, the envelope of the ensemble Likely values (66% probability of occurrence, as defined by the IPCC , corresponding to the 17 th -83 rd percentile range) of the index is also plotted.
On top of the climate projection the historical index values derived from the ERA5 reanalysis (grey line) are plotted to illustrate how the observed annual variability and trend compares to the simulated ones, both over the historical and future period. It also gives an indication of how the expected future conditions may differ in the future according to each scenario.
Figure 8: Historical and projected evolution plot.
Projected trend
This interactive plot is similar to the previous one with two main differences: values are annual anomalies (difference from the 1981-2010 30-year average) and are smoothed with a 30-year moving average (e.g. year 1996 is the average of 1981 to 2010) to focus on the 30 year trend of the simulation (note that the trend of observations is not shown). The plain line represents the ensemble median (RCP8.5 in orange and RCP4.5 in green, see Fig. 9) while the envelope represents the ensemble Likely values (66% probability of occurrence) to give a sense of the uncertainty.
This plot allows to better understand the dynamic of the trajectories of the index under the two scenarios. In particular the approximate period when the effects of the scenarios may diverge as well as the range of possible values at the end of the century.
Figure 9: Projected trend plot.
Historical and projected climatology
The interactive plot shows the historical and projected index climatology under two emission scenarios (plain line, RCP8.5 in orange and RCP4.5 in green, see Fig. 10). For present climate the climatology is the average index values for each of the calendar years. For the climate projections the central value is the median of the model ensemble while the envelope represents the ensemble Likely values (66% probability of occurrence) to give a sense of the uncertainty. The buttons allow switching between three periods: near future (2011-2040), mid future (2041-2070) and far future (2071-2100) conditions.
Figure 10: Historical and projected climatology plot.
Custom plots
Custom plots are different from the standard plots and specific to a few indicators due to the specifications of the underlying data. The two types of custom plots are described below by taking as example the Aridity Actual indicator.
Historical and projected distributions
The historical and projected distributions interactive plot shows 30-year index index statistics from 1971 to 2100 for the four periods under the two emission scenarios (see Fig. 11). This for each or both hydrological models depending on the drop-down menu user selection.
Figure 11: Historical and projected distribution plot.
Historical and projected climatology
The interactive plot shows the historical and projected distribution for each calendar month (or climatology) of the index under two emission scenarios (see Fig. 12). The boxplots show the median, 25th and 50th percentile, minimum and maximum of values to give a sense of the uncertainty. The buttons allow switching between three periods: near future (2011-2040), mid future (2041-2070) and far future (2071-2100) conditions.
This type of plot is useful to identify the potential changes over each month or season, as effects may affect each month differently with a particular season being more affected than the others.
Figure 12: Historical and projected climatology plot
Plot tools
On the right-hand side of each time series plot there is a set of four tools is provide as shown in Figure 14.
Figure 13: Screenshot of a plot showing the plot tools available
These tools allow to perform the following operations:
export the plot including the title and subtitle as png.
download the underlying plot data as a CSV file.
reset the plot to its default settings.
select an area of the plot to zoom on.
Application updates
The first version of the ECDE application was launched on XXX 2024. Since then, the following periodic updates including different fixes (typos and not-substantial changes, improvements and error/bug fixes) have been implemented in the different versions described below (in chronological order with new versions on the top).
Appendix 1: Geographical layers
The table below lists all the regional layers available and the corresponding code to use in the file naming conventions.
Region | Code |
NUTS 0 | nuts_0 |
NUTS 1 | nuts_1 |
NUTS 2 | nuts_2 |
NUTS 3 | nuts_3 |
Non NUTS | non_nuts |
EEA EU 27 | eea_eu_27 |
EEA EU 32 | eea_eu_32 |
EEA EU 38 | eea_eu_38 |
Interreg VI-B Adriatic-Ionian | eea_trans_adriatic_ionian |
Interreg VI-B Alpine Space | eea_trans_alpine_space |
Interreg VI-B Northern Periphery and Arctic | eea_trans_northern_periphery_and_arctic |
Interreg VI-B Atlantic Area | eea_trans_atlantic_area |
Interreg VI-B Baltic Sea Region | eea_trans_baltic_sea_region |
Interreg VI-B Central Europe | eea_trans_central_europe |
Interreg VI-B Danube | eea_trans_danube |
Interreg VI-B Mediterranean (EURO MED) | eea_trans_mediterranean |
Interreg VI-B North Sea | eea_trans_north_sea |
Interreg VI-B North West Europe | eea_trans_north_west_europe |
Interreg VI-B South West Europe (SUDOE) | eea_trans_south_west_europe |
