Summary of global surface temperature datasets
Name | Temperature Change | Climatology | Source | Years of record | Timestep | Spatial Resolution | Input Data |
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Global (land) precipitation and temperature: Willmott & Matsuura, University of Delaware |
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U. Delaware / Cort J. Willmott, Kenji Matsuura | to | Climatology, Monthly | 0.5x0.5 degree |
land stations from GHCNv2 and a few other sources |
Global land-ocean surface temperature data: HadCRUT5 |
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UK Met Office Hadley Centre and Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia | to | Monthly | 5° x 5° |
HadSST4 and CRUTEM5 |
Global surface temperature data: GISTEMP: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Surface Temperature Analysis |
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NASA GISS / R. Reudy, M. Sato, K. Lo, formerly J. Hansen | to | Monthly | 2x2 degree |
GHCN v4 (~6300 land stations); ERSSTv5 (SSTs); SCAR READER (for Antarctic stations) |
Global surface temperature data: HadCRUT4 and CRUTEM4 |
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U East Anglia CRU / Phil Jones and others , UK Met Office Hadley Centre | to | Climatology, Monthly | 5x5 degrees |
~5500 land station records from GHCN and other sources combined with HadSST3 |
Global surface temperature data: MLOST: NOAA Merged Land-Ocean Surface Temperature Analysis |
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NOAA NCDC / RS Vose and others | to | Monthly | 5x5 degrees |
GHCN v3.3 (~7000 land stations); ERSSTv3b (SSTs) |
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Global surface temperatures: BEST: Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures |
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BerkeleyEarth.org/ R. Muller, R. Rhode | to | Climatology, Daily, Monthly | 1x1 degree or equal-area grid , .25 degree available for USA and Europe |
combination of 14 databases of station data; ~37,000 individual records used;; merged land-ocean version uses HadSST3 |
TerraClimate: Global, high-resolution gridded temperature, precipitation, and other water balance variables |
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John Abatzoglou, University of California - Merced | to | Climatology, Monthly | ~4 km (1/24th degree) |
WorldClim, CRUTS4.0 |