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
- to
The QuikSCAT mission was intended to obtain sea-surface wind speed and direction data under all weather and cloud conditions over Earth's oceans. SeaWinds, an active radar…
Experts contributing reviews
- Ricciardulli, Lucrezia
Years of record
- to
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
"WASWind (Wave and Anemometer-based Sea Surface Wind) provides a bias-corrected marine surface wind dataset over the global oceans. Variables include scalar, zonal and…
Experts contributing reviews
- Tokinaga, Hiroki
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…
-
Formats
- N/A
-
Timestep
- N/A
-
Domain
- Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean
-
Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Amaya, Dillon
Years of record
- to
The U.S. Climate Extremes Index (CEI) was first presented in 1995 as a framework for quantifying observed changes in climate within the contiguous United States. At…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air Temperature Precipitation Wind Land Drought-
Formats
- ascii
-
Timestep
- Monthly, Seasonal, Annual
-
Domain
- North America
-
Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Gleason, Karin
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
- 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…
-
Formats
- ascii
-
Timestep
- Seasonal, Annual
-
Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Bracegirdle, Thomas J.
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…
-
Timestep
- N/A
-
Domain
- NH - Northern Hemisphere
-
Collections
- Climate Analysis Section (CAS) Data Catalog
Experts contributing reviews
- Hurrell, James | Trenberth, Kevin
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…
-
Timestep
- Sub-daily, Daily, Monthly
-
Domain
- Global
Experts contributing reviews
- Poli, Paul
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
- 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
-
Timestep
- N/A
-
Domain
- N/A
-
Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Touma, Danielle
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 National Oceanography Centre (NOC) Version 2.0 Surface Flux and Meteorological Dataset is a monthly mean gridded dataset of marine surface measurements and derived…
-
Formats
- netCDF
-
Timestep
- Monthly
-
Domain
- Global
-
Collections
- Climate Data Record
Experts contributing reviews
- Kent, Elizabeth
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
-
Timestep
- Daily, Monthly
-
Domain
- North America
-
Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Livneh, Ben
Years of record
- to
The quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) is a quasi-periodic oscillation of the equatorial zonal wind between easterlies and westerlies in the tropical stratosphere with a mean…
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A
Years of record
- to
The Coordinated Ocean Research Experiments version 2 (COREv2) data set consists of a globally complete set of air-sea fluxes of momentum, heat and freshwater for 1948-…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Evaporation Precipitation Radiation Wind Stress Land Runoff and Streamflow Ocean Surface Flux-
Formats
- netCDF
-
Timestep
- Monthly
-
Domain
- Global
-
Collections
- Diagnostic Data Sets, NCAR-DOE-CESM, atmosdiagnostics, oceandiagnostics
Experts contributing reviews
- Yeager, Stephen
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…
-
Timestep
- Climatology, Sub-daily, Monthly
-
Domain
- Global
Experts contributing reviews
- Pincus, Robert
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
- 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…
-
Timestep
- Sub-daily, Daily, Monthly
-
Domain
- Global
-
Collections
- Diagnostic Data Sets
Experts contributing reviews
- Hersbach, Hans
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 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
- to
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is scanning instrument that makes measurements in 36 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared at…
-
Timestep
- Daily, Monthly, Weekly
-
Domain
- Global
-
Collections
- Diagnostic Data Sets, NCAR-DOE-CESM, atmosdiagnostics, Obs4MIPS
Experts contributing reviews
- Pincus, Robert
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 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 North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS) integrates a large quantity of observation-based and model reanalysis data to produce long-term hourly atmospheric…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature CAPE Evaporation Precipitation Radiation Specific Humidity Surface Pressure Wind-
Timestep
- Climatology, Sub-daily, Monthly
-
Domain
- North America
-
Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Xia, Youlong | Mocko, David
Years of record
- to
"The Extended Edited Synoptic Cloud Reports Archive makes use of routine synoptic observations made by humans on ships over the ocean and at weather stations over land.…
Experts contributing reviews
- Norris, Joel
Years of record
- to
"The OAFlux project aims to provide consistent, multi-decade, global analysis of air-sea heat, freshwater (evaporation), and momentum fluxes for use in studies of global…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Latent & sensible heat flux Radiation Wind Ocean SST - sea surface temperature Surface Flux wind stress curlExperts 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
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
- to
The Hamburg Ocean Atmosphere Parameters and Fluxes from Satellite Data (HOAPS) set is a satellite-based climatology of precipitation, evaporation and freshwater budget (…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Evaporation Evaporation-Precipitation Precipitation Radiation Specific Humidity Wind Latent & sensible heat flux Precipitable water Ocean SST - sea surface temperature-
Formats
- netCDF
-
Timestep
- Climatology, Sub-daily, Monthly, Pentad
-
Domain
- Global
-
Collections
- Boundary Conditions
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A
Years of record
- to
The Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere program (TOGA) is a component of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) aimed specifically at the prediction of climate phenomena…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature Precipitation Radiation Relative Humidity Sea Level Pressure Wind Ocean Absolute Dynamic Topography (ADT) Ocean Heat Content SST - sea surface temperature Salinity Sub Surface Salinity Sub Surface Temperature u, v current componentsExperts contributing reviews
- N/A
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…
-
Timestep
- Monthly, Seasonal, Annual
-
Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Hosking, Scott
Years of record
- to
These ocean surface flux data sets are derived primarily using data from multiple satellites. The COARE 3.0 bulk algorithm [Fairall et al. (2003)] is used in J-OFURO2 for…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Specific Humidity Wind Stress Latent & sensible heat flux Ocean Surface FluxExperts contributing reviews
- N/A
Years of record
- to
The NAM (or Arctic Oscillation) is defined as the first EOF of NH (20°-90°N) winter SLP data. It explains 23% of the extended winter mean (December-March) variance, and it…
-
Formats
- ascii
-
Timestep
- Seasonal
-
Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Phillips, Adam
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
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…
-
Formats
- ascii
-
Timestep
- N/A
-
Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Marshall, Gareth
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,…
-
Formats
- N/A
-
Timestep
- N/A
-
Domain
- N/A
-
Collections
- Overview / Comparison page
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A
Years of record
- to
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures (BEST) are a set of data products, originally a gridded reconstruction of land surface air temperature records spanning 1701-…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air Temperature Ocean SST - sea surface temperatureExperts contributing reviews
- Cowtan, Kevin
Years of record
- to
APHRODITE’s (Asian Precipitation - Highly-Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation) gridded precipitation is a set of long-term (1951 onward) continental-…
Experts contributing reviews
- Maeda, Mio | Yasutomi, Natsuko | Yatagai, Akiyo