High Asia Refined Analysis Version 2 (HAR v2): a New Atmospheric Data Set for the Third Pole Region

Climatic-triggered natural hazards such as landslides and glacier lake outburst floods pose a threat to human lives in the third pole region. Availability of accurate climate data with high spatial and temporal resolution is crucial for better understanding climatic triggering mechanisms of these localized natural hazards. Within the framework of the project “Climatic and Tectonic Natural Hazard in Central Asia” (CaTeNA), High Asia Refined analysis version 2 (HAR v2) is under production, and is freely available upon request. HAR v2 is a regional atmospheric data set generated by dynamical downscaling of global ERA5 reanalysis data using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. Compared to its predecessor (HAR), HAR v2 has an extended 10 km domain covering the Tibetan Plateau and the surrounding mountains, as well as a longer temporal coverage. It will be extended back to 1979, and will be continuously updated in the future. This presentation will contain the following aspects: (1) summarizing the WRF configuration; (2) validating HAR v2 against observational data; (3) comparing HAR v2 with other gridded data sets, such as the newly developed ERA5-Land reanalysis data; (4) providing information about data format, variable list, data access, etc.