Sea surface PAR, total cloud cover and total precipitation (2008-2022) interpolated to a 0.0833 degree rectangular grid

This dataset contains two-dimensional (2D; longitude–latitude) spatially interpolated surface environmental fields derived from the ERA5 single-level reanalysis, comprising estimated photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), total cloud cover (TCC), and total precipitation (TP). The original data, provided on a regular 0.25° × 0.25° grid, were regridded to approximately 0.08333° × 0.08333° using linear interpolation, with nearest-neighbour interpolation used to fill remaining gaps. This spatial harmonization supports integration with the Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) Survey zooplankton dataset provided for the Akvaplan-niva (APN) use case within the DIVE project.

The resulting dataset facilitates environmental data extraction, comparative analyses, and investigation of relationships between surface environmental conditions and zooplankton distributions. Although interpolation increases the spatial sampling density, it does not increase the intrinsic spatial resolution of the original ERA5 data.

The spatial domain extends from 20°W to 29°E and 65°N to 79°N. All three variables represent surface conditions and have no depth dimension:

PAR (spar) is estimated from ERA5 surface incident solar radiation, direct (cdir), using (cdir / 3600) × 0.45, and expressed in W/m². This conversion assumes a one-hour radiation accumulation interval. TCC (tcc) is retained as a dimensionless cloud-cover fraction. TP (tp) is converted from metres to millimetres and represents accumulated precipitation over the source accumulation interval.

The variables are stored together in a NetCDF file with dimensions (time, latitude, longitude). Further processing and provenance details are available in the repository notebook and the embedded NetCDF metadata.