Dataset Of High Temperature Extremes Over The Major Land Areas Of The Belt And Road For 1979-2018

Hot temperature extremes exert strong negative socioeconomic and environmental impacts worldwide. In this paper, we focus on the major land areas of the Belt and Road (BR) and develop a dataset of high temperature extremes including hot days, hot nights and combined hot extremes using Climate Prediction Center (CPC) gridded daily temperature data at a resolution of 0.5 degrees during 1979-2018. The constant thresholds of daily maximum surface air temperature (Tmax) include 28 degrees C, 30 degrees C, 32 degrees C, 35 degrees C, 38 degrees C, and 40 degrees C, while those of daily minimum surface air temperature (Tmin) consist of 20 degrees C, 25 degrees C, and 30 degrees C. Data of hot days, hot nights and combined hot extreme are produced based on different constant Tmax and Tmin thresholds and their combination. We also adopt the 90th and 95th percentile thresholds of Tmax and Tmin to generate high temperature extreme data. The validation with China Meteorological Administration (CMA) data over eastern China for the period of 1979-2011 indicates that our dataset can generally describe the spatial and temporal variations of high temperature extremes well. Potential applications of this dataset include analyses on the local-to-regional characteristics of high temperature extremes and their impacts on various sectors over the major BR land areas. The dataset is available at .