Data onfidence, a metric of how "good" a forecast is relative to climatological variability, is plotted for two reanalysis data sets for two different time periods across the Antarctic region.

"One golden observation is worth a thousand simulations."

- from the Ten Extra Commandments for Climate Modeling by J.E. Kutzbach

Welcome to the Climate Data Guide!

The Climate Data Guide (or "Guide") is an expert knowledge portal providing concise and reliable information on the strengths and limitations of the climate data that are essential for measuring and predicting the evolution of the Earth system.

The Guide publishes data summaries with access links, intercomparisons, and expert commentaries on the utility of climate data for addressing a wide variety of questions in climate science.

The Guide has helped over a million readers from around the world gain an insider's perspective on data ranging from AI-generated precipitation data to state-of-the-art data assimilation products (e.g. reanalysis) to paleoclimate records from tree rings and corals.

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Dataset categories

View our datasets by the main variables and Earth System components

map of winter-mean precipitation in the USA in the PRISM dataset

Atmosphere

Atmospheric variables include temperature, precipitation, wind, pressure, clouds, greenhouse gases, and much more. Explore overview pages and a curated list of the most-used data sets, many of them discussed by experts.

map depicting a generalized ENSO SST anomaly pattern

Climate Indices

Climate indices are simple diagnostic quantities that are used to characterize an aspect of a geophysical system such as a circulation pattern. Climate Indices track droughts, ENSO events, wind patterns, internal modes of climate variability, and extreme events like wildfires and heatwaves. Climate indices play a key role in climate monitoring and prediction.

glacierpic-original

Cryosphere

Cryospheric variables include sea ice concentration, sea ice thickness, snow cover, permafrost, and more. See a curated list of the most-used data sets, many of them discussed by experts.

Daymet V3 annual average of daily maximum temperature for 1980, the start year of the temporal range of Daymet V3 North American data. (credit: Michele Thornton)

Land

Soil moisture, vegetation coverage, surface radiation budgets and more. See a carefully curated list of the most-used data sets, many of them discussed by experts.

sea surface temperatures from MUR SST dataset

Ocean

Sea surface temperature, salinity, currents, air-sea heat fluxes, sea level, ocean heat content, and more.

NADA, provided by Ed Cook

Paleoclimate

Paleoclimate data are derived from Earth's natural climate archives, including tree rings, ice cores, corals, speleothems, and ocean sediments. Such records are used to broaden the sampling of climate variability beyond what is possible from the instrumental record.

Map showing the representation of a hurricane in a new (left) vs old (right) version of the ECMWF reanalysis

Reanalysis

Comprehensive weather and climate datasets, reanalyses assimilate a variety of observations of the atmosphere, land surface, and ocean into a forecast model to provide a dynamically consistent estimate of the climate state at each time step.

Explore all datasets