Construction and Evaluation of Qinghai Meteorological Forcing Dataset

By using the method of China Meteorological Forcing Dataset (CMFD) and integrating the high spatio-temporal resolution meteorological observation data, a 3-hourly, 0.01° gridded dataset of Qinghai Province from 1979 to 2018 is constructed so as to provide basic data for climate change study, ecological assessment and water resources assessment. The results of dataset evaluation show that the correlation coefficient of temperature is 1.0 in monthly-scale, and that of the relative humidity, precipitation, air pressure, and wind speed are 0.92, 0.85, 0.82, and 0.74, respectively. The comparison of dataset evaluation between Qinghai Meteorological Forcing Dataset (QMFD) and NCEP, ERA5 and CLDAS datasets show that the correlation coefficient of temperature data between QMFD and the observation data from regional stations exceeds 0.74, higher than that of ERA5 and NCEP. Meanwhile, the correlation coefficient of precipitation data between QMFD and the observation data from regional stations is above 0.51, which is obviously higher than that of CMAP, ERA5 and GPCP. Moreover, QMFD exhibits its own advantages in spatial and temporal resolutions.