Atmosphere
Atmospheric variables include temperature, precipitation, wind, pressure, clouds, greenhouse gases, and much more. Overview pages summarize and compare selected datasets of a given variable.
To find a specific dataset or variable, jump to the search box below or click your desired variable from among the blue sub-category buttons. Note that the classification of datasets by variable is approximate, especially for large, multi-variable datasets like reanalyses.
To see only the datasets accompanied by in-depth commentary, select the "Datasets with guidance" button when using the search box.
Sub-categories
Climate datasets
Years of record
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The CRU TS series of data sets (CRU TS = Climatic Research Unit Time series) contain gridded monthly fields of precipitation, daily maximum and minimum temperatures, cloud…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature Cloud Properties Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air Temperature Potential Evapotranspiration PrecipitationExperts contributing reviews
- N/A
Years of record
- to
GHCNDEX provides gridded, station-based indices of temperature- and precipitation- related climate extremes. It is intended for climate change detection and attribution…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air Temperature Land Freeze/ThawExperts contributing reviews
- N/A
Years of record
- to
Note: HadEX2 has been superseded by HadEX3. HadEX2 provides gridded, station-based indices of temperature- and precipitation- related climate extremes. It is intended for…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air Temperature Land Freeze/ThawExperts contributing reviews
- N/A
Years of record
- to
"The new Climate Data Record (CDR) provides daily global climate data that are valuable as inputs into Radiation Budget Studies and verifying numerical models and can…
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Formats
- netCDF
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Timestep
- Daily, Monthly
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Climate Data Record
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A
Years of record
- to
The ECMWF's first atmospheric reanalysis of the 20th Century, ERA-20C, provides a long, gridded dataset of many climate variables, spanning 1900-2010. Observations…
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Timestep
- Sub-daily, Daily, Monthly
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Domain
- Global
Experts contributing reviews
- Poli, Paul
Years of record
- to
"The Surface Solar Radiation Data Set - Heliosat (SARAH) is a satellite-based climatology of the solar surface irradiance (SIS), the surface direct normalized irradiance (…
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Formats
- netCDF
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Timestep
- Sub-daily, Daily, Monthly
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Collections
- Climate Data Record
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A
Years of record
- to
IMERG (Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for the Global Precipitation Measurement) is NASA's updated precipitation algorithm, while the Global Precipitation Measurement…
Experts contributing reviews
- Huffman, George J. | Tan, Jackson
Years of record
- to
The station-based index of the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) is based on the zonal pressure difference between the latitudes of 40S and 65S. As such, the SAM index…
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Formats
- ascii
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Timestep
- N/A
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Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Marshall, Gareth
Years of record
- to
The Amundsen Sea Low (ASL) is a climatological low pressure center located over the extreme southern Pacific Ocean, off the coast of West Antarctica. Atmospheric…
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Timestep
- Monthly, Seasonal, Annual
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Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Hosking, Scott
Years of record
- to
The Global Historical Climatology Network Daily database, GHCN-D, contains meteorological measurements from over 90,000 stations across the globe. The majority of…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air Temperature PrecipitationExperts contributing reviews
- McKinnon, Karen
Years of record
- to
The solar radiation arriving at Earth (once known as the “solar constant”, now usually referred to as Total Solar Irradiance (TSI)), is the most fundamental of climate…
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Formats
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Timestep
- N/A
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Ball, William | Haigh, Joanna
Years of record
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The CCMP wind analysis is a near-global, high spatial and temporal resolution gridded dataset of surface wind vectors spanning 1987-present. The input data are a…
Experts contributing reviews
- Ricciardulli, Lucrezia
Years of record
- to
This dataset consists of seasonally resolved timeseries of surface pressure at 18 Antarctic research stations, spanning 1905-2013. Routine meteorological observations…
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Formats
- ascii | Spreadsheet
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Timestep
- Seasonal
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Domain
- Antarctic
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Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A
Years of record
- to
The CERA-20C is a global, coupled reanalysis spanning 1901-2010 with a focus on low-frequency climate variability. Similar to ERA-20C, the surface observations…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Multiple variables Cryosphere Sea Ice Concentration OceanExperts contributing reviews
- Laloyaux, Patrick
Years of record
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The Climatologies at high resolution for the Earth's land surface (CHELSA) dataset contains high spatial resolution monthly climatologies of mean, maximum and minimum…
Experts contributing reviews
- Karger, Dirk
Years of record
- to
The Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, version 2 (MERRA-2) is a global atmospheric reanalysis produced by the NASA Global Modeling and…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Aerosols Air Temperature Geopotential Height Precipitable waterExperts contributing reviews
- Bosilovich, Michael | Cullather, Richard
Years of record
- to
The dynamics of the Southern Hemisphere westerly jet are described in terms of two indices, jet strength and jet latitude. Here, these indices are defined using the…
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Formats
- ascii
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Timestep
- Seasonal, Annual
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Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Bracegirdle, Thomas J.
Years of record
- to
E-OBS is a high spatial resolution daily gridded data that covers the European region and is based on the station data collated by the ECA&D initiative (Klein Tank et al…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air Temperature Precipitation Sea Level PressureExperts contributing reviews
- van der Schrier, Gerard
Years of record
- to
ERA5, the successor to ERA-Interim, provides global, hourly estimates of atmospheric, ocean-wave and land-surface variables, at a horizontal resolution of 31 km and 137…
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Timestep
- Sub-daily, Daily, Monthly
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Diagnostic Data Sets
Experts contributing reviews
- Hersbach, Hans
Years of record
- to
The Livneh et al. (2015) hydrometeorological dataset consists of gridded daily and monthly precipitation, maximum and minimum air temperature, and wind speed for the…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air Temperature Precipitation Wind-
Formats
- netCDF
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Timestep
- Daily, Monthly
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Domain
- North America
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Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Livneh, Ben
Years of record
- to
TerraClimate is a global gridded dataset of meteorological and water balance variables for 1958-present, available on a monthly timestep. Its relatively fine spatial…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air Temperature Potential Evapotranspiration Precipitation Wind Snow Water Equivalent Land evapotranspiration Runoff and Streamflow Soil MoistureExperts contributing reviews
- Abatzoglou, John
Years of record
- N/A
In each of the world’s tropical ocean basins, year-to-year climate variability is primarily governed by fluctuations in the zonal sea surface temperature (SST) gradient and…
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Formats
- N/A
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Timestep
- N/A
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Domain
- Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean
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Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Amaya, Dillon
Years of record
- to
HadCRUT5 is one of the main datasets used to monitor global and regional surface temperature variability and trends. It is a global surface temperature product that combines…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature at 2m Ocean SST - sea surface temperature-
Formats
- netCDF
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Timestep
- Monthly
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Diagnostic Data Sets
Experts contributing reviews
- Hausfather, Zeke
Years of record
- to
Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS) is a quasi-global (50S - 50N), land-only rainfall dataset with a range of temporal and spatial…
Experts contributing reviews
- Touma, Danielle | Martinez, Carlos
Years of record
- N/A
Coral records are one of the main types of high-resolution (annual to sub-annual) paleoclimate proxies, providing timeseries of environmental conditions reaching hundreds to…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Evaporation Evaporation-Precipitation Precipitation Ocean Salinity SST - sea surface temperature-
Formats
- ascii | HTML Table | Linked Paleo Data (LiPD) | Matlab
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Timestep
- N/A
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Domain
- Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Tropics
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Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Lawman, Allison
Years of record
- N/A
Accumulated sediments at the bottom of lakes are invaluable archives of past climate and environmental change. These sediments contain a variety of physical, geochemical,…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature Precipitation Biosphere Pollen Land-
Formats
- ascii | csv | Linked Paleo Data (LiPD)
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Timestep
- Annual, Decadal, Irregular
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Larocca, Laura | Broadman, Ellie
Years of record
- to
Multi-Source Weighted-Ensemble Precipitation (MSWEP) is a sub-daily precipitation dataset with full global coverage at 0.1° resolution, spanning the period 1979 to…
Experts contributing reviews
- Beck, Hylke
Years of record
- to
NOAA’s Global Monitory Laboratory has measured atmospheric methane levels since 1983 at a global cooperative greenhouse gases sampling network, which currently includes more…
Experts contributing reviews
- Lan, Xin
Years of record
- N/A
Fire weather indices are used to quantify the meteorological conditions that can lead to fire ignition and spread. They are used to communicate fire danger levels to…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere-
Formats
- N/A
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Timestep
- N/A
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Domain
- N/A
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Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Touma, Danielle
Years of record
- to
HadEX3 provides gridded, station-based indices of temperature- and precipitation- related climate extremes and supersedes HadEX2. It is intended for global and continental…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature at 2m Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air Temperature Land Freeze/ThawExperts contributing reviews
- Dunn, Robert
Years of record
- to
HadISD ("Hadley Centre Integrated Surface Database") is a compendium of subdaily weather-station data developed by the UK Met Office that is based on NOAA NCEI's Integrated…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature at 2m Dew Point Temperature Precipitation Sea Level Pressure Storm data WindExperts contributing reviews
- Raymond, Colin
Years of record
- to
The Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) is an optically based spaceborne lightning detection instrument that has been hosted on two different platforms – the Tropical Rainfall…
Experts contributing reviews
- Lang, Timothy
Years of record
- to
The largest publicly available collection of quality-controlled, globally-distributed, historical radiosonde and pilot balloon observations is the Integrated Global…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Dew Point Temperature Geopotential Height Multiple variables Relative Humidity WindExperts contributing reviews
- Durre, Imke | Korzeniewski, Bryant
Years of record
- to
The Dynamically Consistent ENsemble of Temperature (DCENT) provides monthly, global, gridded, surface temperature anomalies since 1850. This product provides combined land…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature at 2m Ocean SST - sea surface temperatureExperts contributing reviews
- N/A
Years of record
- to
Summary of 7 satellite-derived products providing a global snapshot of water isotope distribution in 3D, with good information on zonal gradients and seasonality…
Experts contributing reviews
- Risi, Camille
Years of record
- to
NCAR Sea Level Pressure is a gridded analysis of SLP based on land station reports, covering 1899 to present for latitudes 30°N-90°N. Quality controlled raw data plus…
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Timestep
- N/A
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Domain
- NH - Northern Hemisphere
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Collections
- Climate Analysis Section (CAS) Data Catalog
Experts contributing reviews
- Hurrell, James | Trenberth, Kevin
Years of record
- N/A
ICOADS (International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set) is the most comprehensive archive of global marine surface climate observations available. Variables include…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature Budget Cloud Properties Latent & sensible heat flux Sea Level Pressure Specific Humidity Wind Ocean SST - sea surface temperatureExperts contributing reviews
- Deser, Clara
Years of record
- N/A
Reanalysis a systematic approach to produce data sets for climate monitoring and research. Reanalyses are created via an unchanging ("frozen") data assimilation scheme and…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere-
Formats
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Timestep
- N/A
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Domain
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Dee, Dick | Fasullo, John | Shea, Dennis | Walsh, John
Years of record
- to
NCEP-NCAR (R1) is the original reanalysis effort. It uses a frozen global state-of-the-art global data assimilation system (as of 11 January 1995). The original database was…
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Timestep
- Sub-daily, Daily, Monthly
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Domain
- Global
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A
Years of record
- N/A
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…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere-
Formats
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Timestep
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Domain
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Collections
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Experts contributing reviews
- N/A
Years of record
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The Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) was undertaken by NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office with two primary objectives: to…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature Geopotential Height Precipitable water Water Vapor-
Timestep
- Sub-daily, Monthly
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Domain
- Global
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A
Years of record
- to
Spanning 1958-present, JRA-55 is the longest third-generation reanalysis that uses the full observing system (in contrast, products like ERA-20C and NOAA 20CR assimilate a…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature Geopotential Height Precipitable waterExperts contributing reviews
- Kobayashi, Shinya
Years of record
- to
Using a much improved atmospheric model and assimilation system from those used in ERA-40, ERA-Interim represents a third generation reanalysis. Several of the inaccuracies…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature Geopotential Height Precipitable water Precipitation-
Timestep
- Sub-daily, Daily, Monthly
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Domain
- Global
Experts contributing reviews
- Dee, Dick
Years of record
- to
The Twentieth Century Reanalysis (20CR) provides a comprehensive global atmospheric circulation data set spanning 1850-2014. Its chief motivation is to provide an…
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Timestep
- Sub-daily, Daily, Monthly
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Domain
- Global
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A
Years of record
- to
A high resolution (32km x 29 pressure levels) data set focused upon the North American Region. Relative to the NCEP-DOE (R2) it has a much improved land-hydrology, diurnal…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature Geopotential Height Precipitable water Land-
Formats
- GRIB
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Timestep
- Climatology, Sub-daily, Monthly
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Domain
- North America
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Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A
Years of record
- to
The Arctic System Reanalysis is a multi-agency, university-led retrospective analysis (reanalysis) of the Greater Arctic. ASR is produced using high-resolution versions of…
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A
Years of record
- to
The CFSR is a third generation reanalysis product. It is a global, high resolution, coupled atmosphere-ocean-land surface-sea ice system designed to provide the best…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature Geopotential Height Precipitable water Ocean-
Formats
- GRIB
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Timestep
- Sub-daily, Monthly
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Climate Analysis Section (CAS) Data Catalog
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A
Years of record
- to
The International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) makes use of routine observations by operational weather satellites to provide a long-term (1983-2009), gridded…
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Timestep
- Climatology, Sub-daily, Monthly
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Domain
- Global
Experts contributing reviews
- Pincus, Robert
Years of record
- to
The CERES-EBAF product provides 1-degree regional, zonal and global monthly mean Top-of-Atmosphere (TOA) and surface (SFC) longwave (LW), shortwave (SW), and net (NET)…
Experts contributing reviews
- Loeb, Norman
Years of record
- N/A
Precipitation (rain, snow, hail, ...) is one of the key components of the hydrological cycle. Its societal importance cannot be over stated. For climate research,…
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Formats
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Timestep
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Domain
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Collections
- Overview / Comparison page
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A