Development of daily downscaled, bias-corrected CMIP6 climate datasets for estimating reference evapotranspiration (ETo) in South Asia

Multimodel median ensemble of bias-corrected, downscaled daily dataset for following variables :

temperature (tas , K)
solar radiation (rsds, W/m2 )
wind speed (sfcWind, m/s)
relative humidity (hurs, %)

have been prepared for South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) for five climate scenarios.  

The above datasets were use for estimation of reference evapotranspiration (eto, mm) using Penman Monteith model. 

The dataset contains 37 zipped folders in total. 

Of these, 35 are named as {country}_{variable}.zip : each containing five climatic scenarios (historical, ssp126, ssp245, ssp370, and ssp585) for a particular variable and country. Within each scenario folder, daily bias corrected variable are stored with following name: {variable}_day_{country} _{scenario}_bcds.nc.

The folder SouthAsia_monthly_eto.zip contains monthly reference evapotranspiration data for the entire South Asia region across the same five climatic scenarios, and the files are named as eto_month_SouthAsia _{scenario} _bcds.nc. This monthly reference evapotranspiration dataset is provided to facilitate the use of bias-corrected ETo in drought-related applications. 

The folder era5_eto.zip contains the ETo reference data estimated using ERA5 climatic sub-variables for the period 1960–2013. Both daily and monthly reference datasets are included, named as era5_day_eto_{country}_1960_2013.nc and era5_month_eto_southAsia_1960_2013.nc, respectively.

For more details : 

Saha, A., Jain, M.K., Joshi, P. et al. Development of daily downscaled, bias-corrected CMIP6 climate datasets for estimating reference evapotranspiration (ETo) in South Asia. Sci Data 12, 1879 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-06149-4