HadGHCND (aka HadGHCNDEX) is a gridded daily dataset of near-surface maximum (TX) and minimum (TN) temperature observations. Anomalies (departures from 1961-1990 climatology) and actual temperatures are distributed in two separate files. The dataset is designed primarily for the analysis of climate extremes and also for climate model evaluation. It spans the years 1950 to present and is available on a 2.5° latitude by 3.75° longitude grid. The data are gridded using an angular distance weighting scheme. Input data consists of approximately 3000 stations within the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) daily data base. Stations with 20 or more years of record were selected for gridding.