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 Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) is a time series used to characterize the large scale sea level pressure (SLP) patterns in the tropical Pacific. Monthly…
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Timestep
- Monthly
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Domain
- Australia, Pacific Ocean, Tropics
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Collections
- Climate Analysis Section (CAS) Data Catalog
Experts contributing reviews
- Trenberth, Kevin

Years of record
- to
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…
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Formats
- ascii
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Timestep
- Monthly, Seasonal, Annual
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Domain
- Atlantic Ocean
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Collections
- Climate Analysis Section (CAS) Data Catalog
Experts contributing reviews
- Hurrell, James | Phillips, Adam

Years of record
- to
The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) is a widely used index to characterize meteorological drought on a range of timescales. On short timescales, the SPI…
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Formats
- N/A
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Timestep
- Monthly
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Domain
- N/A
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Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Keyantash, John

Years of record
- to
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…
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Timestep
- Climatology, Monthly
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Domain
- Global
Experts contributing reviews
- Pendergrass, Angeline | Wang, Jian-Jian

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)…
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Formats
- ascii
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Timestep
- Seasonal
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Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Phillips, Adam

Years of record
- to
Directly measured and continuous records of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) extend back to 1958. CO2 has also been measured in ancient air samples trapped in…
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Formats
- ascii
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Timestep
- Daily, Monthly, Annual
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Domain
- N/A
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Collections
- Boundary Conditions, Carbon cycle, Overview / Comparison page
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A

Years of record
- to
The North Pacific Index (NP index or NPI) is the area-weighted sea level pressure over the region 30°N-65°N, 160°E-140°W. The NP index is defined to measure…
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Formats
- ascii
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Timestep
- Monthly, Seasonal
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Collections
- Climate Analysis Section (CAS) Data Catalog
Experts contributing reviews
- Hurrell, James | Phillips, Adam

Years of record
- to
The GPCC provides gridded gauge-analysis products derived from quality controlled station data. Two products are for climate: (a) the Full Data Reanalysis…
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Timestep
- Climatology, Daily, Monthly
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Domain
- Global
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A

Years of record
- to
The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) is a joint space mission between NASA and Japan's National Space Development Agency designed to monitor and study…
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Timestep
- Sub-daily, Daily, Monthly
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Domain
- Tropics
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Collections
- Climate Analysis Section (CAS) Data Catalog, Obs4MIPS
Experts contributing reviews
- Huffman, George J. | Pendergrass, Angeline

Years of record
- to
CMAP refers to a collection of precipitation data sets, though the 2.5°x2.5° global monthly version is probably the most widely used. This data set is…
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Timestep
- Monthly, Pentad
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Domain
- Global
Experts contributing reviews
- Arkin, Phil | Xie, PIngping

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…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air Temperature Precipitation Wind Land Drought-
Formats
- ascii
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Timestep
- Monthly, Seasonal, Annual
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Domain
- North America
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Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Gleason, Karin

Years of record
- N/A
Cloud processes and feedbacks are recognized as the largest uncertainty in climate model projections of climate change. Progress in understanding the roles of…
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Formats
- N/A
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Timestep
- N/A
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Diagnostic Data Sets, NCAR-DOE-CESM, atmosdiagnostics
Experts contributing reviews
- Kay, Jennifer

Years of record
- to
A series of gridded temperature and precipitation data sets. Station records that served as bases for the Terrestrial Air Temperature: 1900-2014 Gridded Monthly…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature Air Temperature at 2m Precipitation-
Timestep
- Climatology, Monthly
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Diagnostic Data Sets, NCAR-DOE-CESM, atmosdiagnostics
Experts contributing reviews
- Matsuura, Kenji

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…
Experts contributing reviews
- Norris, Joel

Years of record
- to
This digital archive provides multi-year monthly, seasonal, and annual averages in 5x5-degree grid boxes (or 10x10-degree boxes for some quantities over the…
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Formats
- ascii
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Timestep
- Climatology, Monthly, Seasonal
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Diagnostic Data Sets, NCAR-DOE-CESM, atmosdiagnostics
Experts contributing reviews
- Norris, Joel

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…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Evaporation Precipitation Radiation Wind Stress Land Runoff and Streamflow Ocean Surface Flux-
Formats
- netCDF
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Timestep
- Monthly
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Diagnostic Data Sets, NCAR-DOE-CESM, atmosdiagnostics, oceandiagnostics
Experts contributing reviews
- Yeager, Stephen

Years of record
- to
The principal component (PC)-based indices of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) are the time series of the leading Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) of SLP…
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Formats
- ascii
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Timestep
- Monthly, Seasonal, Annual
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Domain
- Atlantic Ocean
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Collections
- Climate Analysis Section (CAS) Data Catalog
Experts contributing reviews
- Hurrell, James | Phillips, Adam

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…
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
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Timestep
- Climatology, Sub-daily, Monthly, Pentad
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Boundary Conditions
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A

Years of record
- N/A
IBTrACS (International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship) provides global tropical cyclone best track data in a centralized location to aid our…
Experts contributing reviews
- Schreck, Carl

Years of record
- to
A long (30-year+) data set of atmospheric temperatures for 4 tropopsheric and lower stratopsheric layers has been derived from brightness temperatures measured…
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Timestep
- Monthly
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Climate Data Record
Experts contributing reviews
- Mears, Carl

Years of record
- N/A
The uneven distribution of incoming and outgoing radiation is the primary driver of the climate system. The resulting flows of energy by the climate components (…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Budget Evaporation Evaporation-Precipitation Radiation-
Formats
- N/A
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Timestep
- N/A
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Domain
- N/A
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Collections
- Climate Analysis Section (CAS) Data Catalog
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A

Years of record
- to
Era-Interim data are used to derive monthly mass, moisture and energy budget products. Each term is available. Atmospheric energy, mass, and moisture budgets can…
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Formats
- netCDF
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Timestep
- 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
A global (82S-82N) cloud fraction data set, providing a unique view of cloud vertical structure, has been developed based on the complimentary spaceborne remote…
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Formats
- netCDF
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Timestep
- Monthly, Seasonal, Annual
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Diagnostic Data Sets, NCAR-DOE-CESM, atmosdiagnostics
Experts contributing reviews
- Bertrand, William | Kay, Jennifer

Years of record
- to
ThreadEx is a data set of extreme daily temperature and precipitation values for 270 locations in the United States. For each day of the year at each station,…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air Temperature Precipitation-
Formats
- ascii
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Timestep
- Daily
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Domain
- North America
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Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A

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…
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A

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,…
Experts contributing reviews
- Tokinaga, Hiroki

Years of record
- to
PRISM is a set of monthly, yearly, and single-event gridded data products of mean temperature and precipitation, max/min temperatures, and dewpoints, primarily…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Dew Point Temperature Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air Temperature Precipitation-
Formats
- ARC/INFO ASCII GRID | netCDF
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Timestep
- Climatology, Daily, Monthly
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Domain
- North America
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Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Daly, Christopher

Years of record
- to
The 1DD product provides precipitation estimates on a 1-degree grid over the entire globe at 1-day (daily) for the period October 1996 - present. Both the Pentad…
Experts contributing reviews
- Pendergrass, Angeline

Years of record
- to
"CMORPH (CPC MORPHing technique) produces global precipitation analyses at very high spatial and temporal resolution. This technique uses precipitation estimates…
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A

Years of record
- to
The Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks- Climate Data Record (PERSIANN-CDR) provides daily rainfall…
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Timestep
- Sub-daily, Daily
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Climate Data Record
Experts contributing reviews
- Ashouri, Hamed | Gehne, Maria

Years of record
- to
A gauge-based analysis of daily precipitation has been constructed over the global land areas. Gauge reports from over 30,000 stations are collected from…
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A

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-…
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 OAFlux project aims to provide consistent, multi-decade, global analysis of air-sea heat, freshwater (evaporation), and momentum fluxes for use in studies…
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
Daymet provides long-term, continuous, gridded estimates of daily weather and climatology variables by interpolating and extrapolating ground-based observations…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air Temperature Precipitation Radiation Water Vapor Cryosphere Snow Water Equivalent-
Timestep
- Climatology, Daily
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Domain
- North America
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Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Thornton, Peter E

Years of record
- to
CloudSat is a satellite mission designed to measure the vertical structure of clouds from space. The radar data produces detailed images of cloud structures.…
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A

Years of record
- to
CALIPSO (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations ) was launched on April 28, 2006 to study the impact of clouds and aerosols on the…
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A

Years of record
- to
The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) project has generated decadal-length, global, gridded data sets of temperature and specific humidity for several standard…
Experts contributing reviews
- Tian, Baijun

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…
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Timestep
- Daily, Monthly, Weekly
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Diagnostic Data Sets, NCAR-DOE-CESM, atmosdiagnostics, Obs4MIPS
Experts contributing reviews
- Pincus, Robert

Years of record
- to
This is a monthly, zonal-mean ozone profile data set spanning 1979–2005 for altitudes from the tropopause up to 50 km. Interannual variability is based on a…
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Formats
- binary
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Timestep
- Monthly
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Boundary Conditions
Experts contributing reviews
- Randel, Bill

Years of record
- to
"The AC&C/SPARC ozone database covers the period 1850 to 2100 and can be used as forcing in climate models that do not include interactive chemistry. The…
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Formats
- netCDF
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Timestep
- Monthly
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Boundary Conditions, CMIP5-recommended, AC&C/SPARC ozone
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A

Years of record
- to
Combined monthly mean vertical ozone profile database spanning the period 1979 to 2007. The database is completely filled such that there are no missing data.…
Experts contributing reviews
- Hassler, Birgit

Years of record
- N/A
Bodeker Scientific produces global, daily, total column ozone database by combining measurements from a number of different satellite-based instruments. Offsets…
Experts contributing reviews
- N/A

Years of record
- to
HadGHCND (aka HadGHCNDEX) is a gridded daily dataset of near-surface maximum (TX) and minimum (TN) temperature observations. Anomalies (departures from 1961-1990…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air TemperatureExperts contributing reviews
- N/A

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…
Experts contributing reviews
- Ricciardulli, Lucrezia

Years of record
- to
AIRS Version 6 Level 2 data represent a significant improvement over AIRS Version 5 Level 2 products in terms of greater stability, yield, and quality. Several…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Aerosols Air Temperature CO Geopotential Height Ozone: Tropospheric Precipitable water Specific HumidityExperts contributing reviews
- N/A

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)…
Experts contributing reviews
- Maeda, Mio | Yasutomi, Natsuko | Yatagai, Akiyo

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…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature CAPE Evaporation Precipitation Radiation Specific Humidity Surface Pressure Wind-
Timestep
- Climatology, Sub-daily, Monthly
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Domain
- North America
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Collections
- N/A
Experts contributing reviews
- Xia, Youlong | Mocko, David

Years of record
- N/A
AIRS provides satellite retrieval of mid-tropospheric carbon dioxide even under cloudy conditions, without the use of a priori information from models. AIRS…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere CO Ozone: Tropospheric Biosphere CH4-Methane CO CO2-
Timestep
- Sub-daily, Daily, Monthly
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Carbon cycle
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…
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
"CLARA-A1 (CLoud, Albedo and RAdiation dataset, AVHRR-based, version 1) is a global dataset of cloud properties, surface albedo and surface radiation products,…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Cloud Properties Liquid Water Path Radiation Surface albedo-
Formats
- netCDF
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Timestep
- Daily, Monthly, Pentad
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Climate Data Record
Experts contributing reviews
- Stengel, Martin