Climate Data Guide from NCAR's Climate Analysis Section | Climate Data Strengths, Limitations, and Applications




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The Scoop on Global MSU Temperature Profiles

Veteran remote sensing expert Carl Mears discusses the pros and cons of MSU-derived vertical temperature profiles and their comparison with model output.

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Trends in monsoon rainfall? Depends on the Reanalysis

CDG's own Reanalysis geek John Fasullo compares 5 reanalysis data sets, each with dramatically different 20th-Century trends in monsoon rainfall.

The Climate Data Guide compares the features of 12 different reanalysis data sets.

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Where is the ground frozen?

Stephan Gruber guides you with his global map of permafrost occurrence.

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Data sets for Model Evaluation? There's a tag for that

The Climate Data Guide features a tagging system and searchable metadata that make finding data sets with specific attributes a breeze.

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Please spread the word about the Climate Data Guide among your students, professors, friends and colleagues. Right-click "Read more" for a printable one-page flyer or email attachment.

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Be a data set format and regridding pro

Read all about GRIB, netCDF, ascii and HDF files from NCAR data analyst Dennis Shea. Discuss best practices for regridding data and model output.

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What's so great about ERA-Interim?

We asked Dick Dee of ECMWF to comment on the strengths and limitations of ERA-Interim and other reanalyses.

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reanalysis

Atmospheric Reanalysis: Overview & Comparison Tables

Reanalysis a systematic approach to produce data sets for climate monitoring and research. Reanalyses are created via an unchanging ("frozen") data assimilation scheme and model(s) which ingest all...

experts: Dee, Dick | Walsh, John | Fasullo, John | Shea, Dennis

Simplistic Overview of Reanalysis Data Assimilation Methods

Data assimilation is the process of combining observations from a wide variety of sources and forecast output from a weather prediction model. The resulting analysis is considered to be the 'best'...

climate indices

NAO North Atlantic Oscillation Index station-based by Hurrell

Hurrell North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) Index (station-based)

The winter (December thru March) station-based index of the NAO is based on the difference of normalized sea level pressure (SLP) between Lisbon, Portugal and Stykkisholmur/Reykjavik, Iceland...

experts: Hurrell, James

SPI for 12-month run ending December, 2010. GPCP dataset was used.

Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI)

The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) is a probability index that was developed to give a better representation of abnormal wetness and dryness than the PSDI. It uses a gamma or a Pearson Type...

atmosphere/ocean

Large-Yeager Air-Sea Surface Flux (COREv2): 1949-2006

Coordinated Ocean Research Experiments (CORE) version 2 data set: "The air–sea fluxes of momentum, heat, freshwater and their components have been computed globally from 1948 at frequencies ranging...

experts: Large, William | Yeager, Steve

Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP)

Data from rain gauge stations, satellites, and sounding observations have been merged to estimate monthly rainfall on a 2.5-degree global grid from 1979 to the present. The careful combination of...

IBTrACS: Tropical cyclone best track data

IBTrACS (International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship) provides global tropical cyclone best track data in a centralized location to aid our understanding of the distribution, frequency,...

experts: Schreck, Carl

Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE): 1985-89

The Goddard Space Flight Center built the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS) on which the first ERBE instruments were launched by the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1984. ERBE instruments were also...

Merged Hadley-NOAA/OI Sea Surface Temperature & Sea-Ice Concentration (Hurrell et al, 2008)

The merged Hadley-OI sea surface temperature (SST) and sea ice concentration (SIC) data sets were specifically developed as surface forcing data sets for AMIP style uncoupled simulations of the...

What is the Climate Data Guide?

The Climate Data Guide is the go-to source for scientifically sound information and advice on the strengths, limitations, and applications of climate data. Experts who construct, evaluate, and compare climate data sets contribute their perspectives and advice on climate data and analysis methods for a broad community of data users. Users may participate by posting comments, questions, and links.

Climate Data News

Announce newly available data, data portals, publications, & perspectives

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National Academies report warns of rapid decline in Earth observing capabilities [link]

NCL training (for data analysis and visualization) reaches out to universities [link]

Challenges of a Sustained Climate Observing System - Trenberth et al. on why observations matter [link]

Sea Rise obs for ice sheet models [link]

more...

Climate Data Comments, Q&A

on Water Isotopes from Satellites:

Bascially, I hope to compare these satellite observations to investigate the PNA pattern...

Zhongfang Liu (Tianjin Normal University)

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on Atmospheric Reanalysis: Overview & Comparison Tables:

Arctic applications of atmospheric reanalyses Temperatures over the central Arctic in...

John Walsh (University of Alaska, Fairbanks)

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on Merged Hadley-NOAA/OI Sea Surface Temperature & Sea-Ice Concentration (Hurrell et al, 2008):

From my reading of Rayner et al. (2003), it appears that HadiSST and NOAA OI use the same sea...

David Schneider (NCAR)

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