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Gridded 20-Year Parameterization of a Stochastic Weather Generator (CLIGEN) for South American and African Continents at 0.25 Arc Degree Resolution

Published by Agricultural Research Service | Department of Agriculture | Metadata Last Checked: January 27, 2026 | Last Modified: 2025-11-21
CLImate GENerator (CLIGEN) is a stochastic weather generator that produces daily and sub-daily timeseries of weather variables. The resulting timeseries are statistically similar to observed timeseries considering various temporal scales and climate factors. This dataset consisting of CLIGEN inputs may be used to generate timeseries at any point in a 0.25 arc degree resolution grid covering South American and African continents. Estimated parameter values at each grid point are based on 20-year records taken from global climate datasets. Precipitation parameters are statistically downscaled from grid-scale to point-scale based on observations from globally distributed ground networks representing >10,000 stations. This dataset is intended for use in climate-related research in ungauged areas where observed climate records are unavailable. The data are formatted as CLIGEN .par files, which are the only required input for CLIGEN. The files are separated into Africa and South America folders containing n=40936 and n=24588 files, respectively. The files are labeled according to grid point lat/lon coordinates (WGS84) in decimal degrees. The labeling convention uses 'N' and 'E' (north, east) to represent coordinates with a positive sign and 'S' and 'W' (south, west) to represent coordinates with a negative sign. Resources in this dataset:Resource Title: Grid Files. File Name: Grid Files.zipResource Description: CLIGEN input files (.par) for the South America and Africa grid.Resource Title: Summary Table. File Name: Summary Table.docxResource Description: Summary table that lists CLIGEN parameters and basic dataset characteristics of the gridded parameterization.

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