Data from: MERRAclim, a high-resolution global dataset of remotely sensed bioclimatic variables for ecological modelling

Species Distribution Models (SDMs) combine information on the geographic occurrence of species with environmental layers to estimate distributional ranges and have been extensively implemented to answer a wide array of applied ecological questions. Unfortunately, most global datasets available to parameterize SDMs consist of spatially interpolated climate surfaces obtained from ground weather station data and have omitted the Antarctic continent, a landmass covering c. 20% of the Southern Hemisphere and increasingly showing biological effects of global change. Here we introduce MERRAclim, a global set of satellite-based bioclimatic variables including Antarctica for the first time. MERRAclim consists of three datasets of 19 bioclimatic variables that have been built for each of the last three decades (1980s, 1990s and 2000s) using hourly data of 2 m temperature and specific humidity. We provide MERRAclim at three spatial resolutions (10 arc-minutes, 5 arc-minutes and 2.5 arc-minutes). These reanalysed data are comparable to widely used datasets based on ground station interpolations, but allow extending their geographical reach and SDM building in previously uncovered regions of the globe.

物种分布模型（Species Distribution Models, SDMs）将物种的地理分布记录与环境图层信息相结合，以估算物种的分布范围，目前已被广泛应用于解答各类应用生态学研究问题。遗憾的是，当前多数可用于对物种分布模型进行参数化的全球数据集，均基于地面气象站数据经空间插值得到的气候表面构建，且均未涵盖南极大陆——这片约占南半球陆地总面积20%的陆块，正日益显现出全球变化带来的生物学影响。在此，我们推出MERRAclim数据集，这是全球首个纳入南极地区的卫星基生物气候变量数据集。MERRAclim包含三套数据集，分别对应近三个年代（1980年代、1990年代与2000年代），每套均涵盖19个生物气候变量，构建所用数据为逐小时的2米气温与比湿观测资料。本数据集提供三种空间分辨率版本，分别为10弧分、5弧分与2.5弧分。该再分析数据集与当前广泛使用的地面气象站插值气候数据集精度相当，且可将物种分布模型的应用范围拓展至此前未被覆盖的全球区域。