CHELSA-TraCE21k: Downscaled transient temperature and precipitation data since the last glacial maximum

High resolution, downscaled climate model data are used in a wide variety of applications in environmental sciences. Here we present the CHELSA-TraCE21k downscaling algorithm to create global monthly climatologies for temperature and precipitation at 30 arcsec spatial resolution in 100 year time steps for the last 21,000 years. Paleo orography at high spatial resolution and at each timestep is created by combining high resolution information on glacial cover from current and Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) glacier databases with the interpolation of a dynamic ice sheet model (ICE6G) and a coupling to mean annual temperatures from CCSM3-TraCE21k. Based on the reconstructed paleo orography, mean annual temperature and precipitation was downscaled using the CHELSA V1.2 algorithm.

The data is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license.