VALUE is an open European collaboration to intercompare downscaling approaches for climate change research, focusing on different validation aspects (marginal, temporal, extremes, spatial, process‐based, etc.). Here we describe the participating methods and first results from the first experiment, using “perfect” reanalysis (and reanalysis‐driven regional climate model (RCM)) predictors to assess the intrinsic performance of the methods for downscaling precipitation and temperatures over a set of 86 stations representative of the main climatic regions in Europe. This study constitutes the largest and most comprehensive to date intercomparison of statistical downscaling methods, covering the three common downscaling approaches (perfect prognosis, model output statistics—including bias correction—and weather generators) with a total of over 50 downscaling methods representative of the most common techniques.Overall, most of the downscaling methods greatly improve (reanalysis or RCM) raw model biases and no approach or technique seems to be superior in general, because there is a large method‐to‐method variability. The main factors most influencing the results are the seasonal calibration of the methods (e.g., using a moving window) and their stochastic nature. The particular predictors used also play an important role in cases where the comparison was possible, both for the validation results and for the strength of the predictor–predictand link, indicating the local variability explained. However, the present study cannot give a conclusive assessment of the skill of the methods to simulate regional future climates, and further experiments will be soon performed in the framework of the EURO‐CORDEX initiative (where VALUE activities have merged and follow on).Finally, research transparency and reproducibility has been a major concern and substantive steps have been taken. In particular, the necessary data to run the experiments are provided at http://www.value‐cost.eu/data and data and validation results are available from the VALUE validation portal for further investigation: http://www.value‐cost.eu/validationportal.

Temporal variability is an important feature of climate, comprising systematic variations such as the annual cycle, as well as residual temporal variations such as short‐term variations, spells and variability from interannual to long‐term trends. The EU‐COST Action VALUE developed a comprehensive framework to evaluate downscaling methods. Here we present the evaluation of the perfect predictor experiment for temporal variability. Overall, the behaviour of the different approaches turned out to be as expected from their structure and implementation. The chosen regional climate model adds value to reanalysis data for most considered aspects, for all seasons and for both temperature and precipitation. Bias correction methods do not directly modify temporal variability apart from the annual cycle. However, wet day corrections substantially improve transition probabilities and spell length distributions, whereas interannual variability is in some cases deteriorated by quantile mapping. The performance of perfect prognosis (PP) statistical downscaling methods varies strongly from aspect to aspect and method to method, and depends strongly on the predictor choice. Unconditional weather generators tend to perform well for the aspects they have been calibrated for, but underrepresent long spells and interannual variability. Long‐term temperature trends of the driving model are essentially unchanged by bias correction methods. If precipitation trends are not well simulated by the driving model, bias correction further deteriorates these trends. The performance of PP methods to simulate trends depends strongly on the chosen predictors.