Precipitation Variability and Extremes in Central Europe: New View from STAMMEX Results

The STAMMEX (Spatial and Temporal Scales and Mechanisms of Extreme Precipitation Events over Central Europe) project has developed a high-resolution gridded long-term precipitation dataset based on the daily-observing precipitation network of the German Weather Service DWD, which runs one of the world's densest rain gauge networks, comprising more than 7,500 stations. Several quality-controlled daily gridded products with homogenized sampling were developed covering the periods 1931–onward (with 0.5° resolution), 1951–onward (0.5° and 0.25°), and 1971–2000 (0.5°, 0.25°, and 0.1°). Different methods were tested to select the best gridding methodology that minimizes errors of integral grid estimates over hilly terrain. Besides daily precipitation values with uncertainty estimates, the STAMMEX datasets include a variety of statistics that characterize temporal and spatial dynamics of the precipitation distribution (quantiles, extremes, wet/ dry spells, etc.). Comparisons with existing continental-scale daily...