MetUM and HIRHAM5 simulations of summer near-surface temperatures over Antarctica from 1979 to 2019

High-resolution hindcasts (1979-2019) of summer climate over Antarctica using the UK Met Office Unified Model (MetUM) and HIRHAM5 were conducted at the British Antarctic Survey and Danish Meteorological Institute, respectively. The hindcasts are conducted for summer 1979-2018, i.e., from December 1979 to February 2019, for December, January, February (DJF). This dataset consists of near-surface temperature output from these hindcasts at a temporal resolution of every 3 hrs. The hindcasts are contributions to the COordinated Regional Downscaling EXperiment (CORDEX) project. Both models are run over Antarctic CORDEX domains, which encompass all of Antarctica and some of the surrounding ocean, at a horizontal grid spacing of around 12 km. The near-surface temperatures are used to estimate regional surface melt "potential" over Antarctic ice shelves as a function of summertime temperature extremes and identify regions of potentially enhanced "hotspots" of melt potential based on the occurrence (and magnitude) of various temperatures. Funding was provided by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation framework programme under Grant agreement no. 101003590 (PolarRES)