ISIMIP2a/b: Issue on spatial consistency of historical and scenario population data #36

issue

volkholz reported on March 15, 2023.
While national and global population in ISIMIP2 seem consistent between historical and scenario datasets (e.g. population_histsoc_0p5deg_annual_1861-2005.nc4 and population_ssp2soc_0p5deg_annual_2006-2100.nc4), it turns out that a given country population may be distributed differently across the grid cells corresponding to the given country, causing discontinuities in the individual grid cells population time series.

To overcome this issue and obtain spatially consistent historical and scenario data, the Bclimate group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel implemented a fix. The code is available at https://github.com/VUB-HYDR/isimip2b_population_correction . The improved population data is made available as secondary input for both ISIMIP2a and ISIMIP2b. The file names are population_histsoc_0p5deg_annual_1861-2005.nc4 and population_rcp26soc_0p5deg_annual_2006-2100.nc4.

Details

Affected datasets can still be used for simulations or research.

Severity low

Status resolved

Versions
all versions affected
Spatial resolution
30arcmin, 5arcmin
Input subcategory
Population data
Simulation round
ISIMIP2a, ISIMIP2b

Affected datasets

There are 15 datasets affected by this caveat. You can download a complete list of all the datasets, or files affected by this caveat as JSON. Alternatively, can also download a list the files as a flat file suitable for Wget. You can use the search interface to further restrict your query.