QUEST projects both used and produced an immense variety of global data sets that needed to be shared efficiently between the project teams. These global synthesis data sets are also a key part of QUEST's legacy, providing a powerful way of communicating the results of QUEST among and beyond the UK Earth System research community. This dataset contains 30 year surface meteorology climatologies from CRU TS3.0 data. Data includes parameters such as temperature, water vapour and precipitation.

The QUEST-GSI WPd1 "Climate scenarios". The aim was to construct climate scenarios representing the effects of uncertainty and different rates of climate forcing. This dataset contains model data which construct climate scenarios. The project requires climate scenarios which (a) characterise the uncertainty in the climate change associated with a given forcing, including changes in climate variability and extreme events, and (b) allow the construction of generalised relationships between climate forcing and impact.

QUEST projects both used and produced an immense variety of global data sets that needed to be shared efficiently between the project teams. These global synthesis data sets are also a key part of QUEST's legacy, providing a powerful way of communicating the results of QUEST among and beyond the UK Earth System research community. This dataset contains socio-economic scenarios from the IPCC SRES report.

QUEST projects both used and produced an immense variety of global data sets that needed to be shared efficiently between the project teams. These global synthesis data sets are also a key part of QUEST's legacy, providing a powerful way of communicating the results of QUEST among and beyond the UK Earth System research community. This dataset contains global Population Distribution (1990), Terrestrial Area and Country Name Information on a One by One Degree Grid Cell Basis.

QUEST projects both used and produced an immense variety of global data sets that needed to be shared efficiently between the project teams. These global synthesis data sets are also a key part of QUEST's legacy, providing a powerful way of communicating the results of QUEST among and beyond the UK Earth System research community. This dataset contains decadal surface meteorology climatologies from CRU TS3.0 data 1901- 2000. Data includes parameters such as temperature, water vapour and precipitation.

QUEST projects both used and produced an immense variety of global data sets that needed to be shared efficiently between the project teams. These global synthesis data sets are also a key part of QUEST's legacy, providing a powerful way of communicating the results of QUEST among and beyond the UK Earth System research community. This dataset contains monthly climatology measurements for 1961-1990.

Quaternary QUEST was led by Dr Tim Lenton at UEA, with a team of 10 co-investigators at the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Reading, Leeds, Bristol, Southampton and at UEA. This dataset collection contains glacial and isotope model data. Over the last million years, the Earth has experienced a sequence of temperature oscillations between glacial and interglacial states, linked to variations in the Earth’s orbit around the sun. These climate oscillations were accompanied by changes in atmospheric CO2, but the fundamental reasons for this relationship are still unresolved. This project team aimed to compile a synthesis of palaeodata from sediments and ice cores, improve the synchronization of these records with each other, and use this greater understanding of the Earth’s ancient atmosphere to improve Earth system models simulating climate over very long timescales. A combined long-term data synthesis and modelling approach has helped to constrain some key mechanisms responsible for glacial-interglacial CO2 change, and Quaternary QUEST narrowed the field of ocean processes that could have caused glacial CO2 drawdown.

QUAAC was led by Prof John Pyle (University of Cambridge), with 11 co-investigators at the Universities of Sheffield, Leeds, York, Lancaster and Manchester, and from CEH. The dataset collection includes results of the development and testing of chemistry and aerosol schemes to include in a climate model, a range of schemes to describe (interactively wherever possible) surface emissions of reactive trace gases, and new surface deposition schemes. Coupling between the chemistry/climate system and land surface processes are important controls on the atmosphere, but chemical schemes have only recently and simplistically been introduced into numerical models. QUAAC studied the role of surface processes on atmospheric oxidizing capacity and aerosol loading, building on an existing Met Office/NERC initiative to develop a new community model, UKCA, to study the interaction between climate and atmospheric composition. New chemistry and aerosol schemes were developed for inclusion in the model. Schemes were also developed to describe (interactively wherever possible) surface emissions of reactive trace gases and deposition processes.

FireMAFS was led by Prof Martin Wooster (Kings College, London) as part of QUEST Theme 3 (Quantifying and Understanding the Earth System) project. This dataset collection contains the MODIS Land Cover Type product multiple classification schemes, which describe land cover properties derived from observations spanning a year’s input of Terra and Aqua data. The data are stored in a 10 arc minute grid. Fire was the most important disturbance agent worldwide in terms of area and variety of biomass affected, a major mechanism by which carbon is transferred from the land to the atmosphere, and a globally significant source of aerosols and many trace gas species. Despite such clear coupling between fire, climate, and vegetation, fire was not modelled as an interactive component of the climate/earth systems models of full complexity or intermediate complexity, that are used to model terrestrial ecosystem processes principally for simulating CO2 exchanges. The objective of FireMAFS was to resolve these limitations by developing a robust method to forecast fire activity (fire 'danger' indices, ignition probabilities, burnt area, fire intensity etc), via a process-based model of fire-vegetation interactions, tested, improved, and constrained. This used a state-of-the-art EO data products and driven by seasonal weather forecasts issued with many months lead-time. Much of the activity of FireMAFS was shaped by the research and technical priorities of QUESTESM (earth system model). Key activities included the progressive development of the JULES-ED and SPITFIRE submodels. Fire is now very well represented in QESM (Quest Earth System Model), making progress towards a modelling capability for fire risk forecasting in the context of global change.

PalaeoQUMP was headed by Prof Sandy Harrison of the University of Bristol, with co-investigators at the University of Southampton and Durham University, as part of QUEST (Quantifying and Understanding the Earth System). This dataset collection contains data from charcoal records that have been compiled for the Mediterranean, Black Sea-Caspian and Sea corridor region. PalaeoQUMP aimed to constrain climate sensitivity by using a wider range of derived climate observations from the geological past (reconstructions from sediments and geomorphological changes for the Last Glacial Maximum and the mid-Holocene period), to evaluate climate model predictions generated using the same series of simulations as QUMP produced for the modern climate. The mid-Holocene and LGM climate reconstructions have been completed, with input from the PMIP Quantitative Reconstruction working group. Robust patterns evident in the data sets are being used as benchmarks and targets for the IPCC AR5 palaeoclimate simulations. The team has also produced the first coupled model (AOGCM) perturbed physics ensemble simulations of the MH and LGM. However the objective of using this data for an improved understanding of past climate to better constrain climate sensitivity has not yet been fully achieved.