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A wide range of observational data are used for evaluating climate models. This includes both in-situ measurements of near-surface variables as well as data from the atmosphere and oceans and remote sensing data from satellites and weather radars. It also includes so called reanalysis data that is a composite of observations as analysed by a weather prediction model.
Various data sets are used for model evaluation in different regions. This includes both global datasets and more detailed regional datasets. Many such datasets consist of information from near-surface observations that have been gridded but it could also be data from satellites. In addition to observations and remote sensing data, also reanalysis data are extensively used. These data are a blend of observations and weather forecast models. Particularly, for the evaluation of the EURO-CORDEX regional climate models a strong emphasize has been on the gridded data from E-OBS with daily data for temperature and precipitation for Europe extending back to 1950 (Cornes et al. 2018).
Users of EURO-CORDEX regional climate models should be aware that the observational material used for evaluation of regional climate models differ between different areas in Europe. For some areas, notably areas of complex topography, there are limitations in these data and, consequently, the skill of the climate models may not be fully known.