Climate Data
The Climate Data Guide curates expert insights on over 200 observational datasets and climate indices, searchable or browseable in the list below.
To find a specific dataset or climate variable, jump to the the search box. For only the datasets paired with guidance written by experts, select the "Datasets with guidance" button when using the search box.
Data creators, data publishers, and scientists who use climate data are invited to join our Network of Experts by contributing commentaries on data strengths and limitations to the Climate Data Guide. What type of data are included? See this discussion.
With the exception of about 25 climate indices, the Climate Data Guide does not host datasets. Data cannot be downloaded from this site. However, links are provided to download locations under the "Data Access" section of each dataset page.
Climate datasets

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 parameters as it indicates the totality of the energy driving the climate system. All…
-
Formats
-
Timestep
-
Domain
- Global
-
Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- Ball, William | Haigh, Joanna

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 empirical corrections for changes in instrumentation and station location…
-
Timestep
-
Domain
- NH - Northern Hemisphere
-
Collections
- Climate Analysis Section (CAS) Data Catalog
Experts contributing reviews
- Hurrell, James | Trenberth, Kevin

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 (GPM) mission is an international satellite mission launched by NASA and JAXA on Feb. 27…
Experts contributing reviews
- Huffman, George J.

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 enhanced (additional, quality checked datasets) by NCAR's Data Support Section.…
-
Timestep
- Sub-daily, Daily, Monthly
-
Domain
- Global
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
Clouds cover about 70% of the earth's surface. They are important components of the cliimate's water and energy budgets. Historically, cloud reports have come from station or ship observations. The satellite observation era, beginning in the 1980’s and…
-
Formats
-
Timestep
- Climatology, Monthly
-
Domain
- Global
-
Collections
- Overview / Comparison page
Experts contributing reviews
- Stubenrauch, Claudia

Years of record
- to
"CMORPH (CPC MORPHing technique) produces global precipitation analyses at very high spatial and temporal resolution. This technique uses precipitation estimates that have been derived from low orbiter satellite microwave observations exclusively, and whose…
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
GODAS is a real-time ocean analysis and a reanalysis. It is used for monitoring, retrospective analysis as well as for providing oceanic initial conditions for the CFS. Both temperature and synthetic salinity profiles are assimilated in a 3DVAR scheme.…
Main variables and Earth System components
Ocean 3D Velocity SST - sea surface temperature Salinity heat flux isothermal layer depth mixed layer depth potential temperature salt flux sea surface height-
Timestep
- Monthly, Pentad
-
Domain
- Global
-
Collections
- Climate Analysis Section (CAS) Data Catalog
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
The World Ocean Atlas (WOA) is a set of climatological mean, gridded fields of oceanographic variables based on in-situ measurements from a wide variety of sources. Global, decadal averages of temperature, salinity, oxygen and nutrients are provided at monthly…
Main variables and Earth System components
Ocean Dissolved Oxygen SST - sea surface temperature Sub Surface Salinity Sub Surface Temperature Sub-surface data phosphate potential temperature silicate-
Timestep
- Climatology, Monthly, Seasonal
-
Domain
- Global
-
Collections
- Diagnostic Data Sets, NCAR-DOE-CESM, oceandiagnostics
Experts contributing reviews
- Mishonov, Alexey

Years of record
While satellite observations of sea ice extent and concentration are available from 1979, long-term high quality (daily and high spatial resolution) observations of sea ice thickness remain limited as a result of few satellite and in situ observations.…
Experts contributing reviews
- Labe, Zachary

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 temperatures and mean precipitation, representing the period 1979-2013. CHELSA is essentially…
Experts contributing reviews
- Karger, Dirk

Years of record
- to
The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) refers to a pair of NASA satellites that has flown in low-Earth orbit since 2002. The satellites use a precise microwave ranging system to measure the distance between themselves due to gravitational…
Main variables and Earth System components
Cryosphere Glaciers Ice Sheet Mass Land Groundwater Water Storage surface water Ocean Bottom pressure-
Timestep
- Daily, Monthly
-
Domain
- Global
-
Collections
- Diagnostic Data Sets, NCAR-DOE-CESM, landdiagnostics, landicediagnostics
Experts contributing reviews
- Swenson, Sean

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 energy budget, water cycle, atmosphere and ocean circulation, and climate. The OAFlux…
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
- None

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 scatterometer, is the main instrument on the QuikSCAT satellite. The microwave…
Experts contributing reviews
- Ricciardulli, Lucrezia

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 ice cores, and these records extend back hundreds of thousands of years. More recently, CO2 is being…
-
Formats
- ascii
-
Timestep
- Daily, Monthly, Annual
-
Domain
-
Collections
- Boundary Conditions, Carbon cycle, Overview / Comparison page
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) values are derived from surface reflectance data acquired by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) sensor. By applying knowledge gathered over time about instrument performance and sensor…
Experts contributing reviews
- None

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 identify the variations in tropical clouds and rainfall that drive global weather patterns.…
-
Formats
- netCDF
-
Timestep
- Daily, Monthly
-
Domain
- Global
-
Collections
- Climate Data Record
Experts contributing reviews
- None

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 variability in this region is larger than anywhere else in the Southern Hemisphere, and exhibits…
-
Timestep
- Monthly, Seasonal, Annual
-
Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- Hosking, Scott

Years of record
Sea ice concentration is both an indicator and driver of high-latitude climate change with strong societal and ecological importance. It is a key boundary condition for atmospheric models (including those used in atmospheric reanalyses) and a benchmark for…
-
Formats
-
Timestep
-
Collections
- Overview / Comparison page
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
EN4 is a subsurface temperature and salinity dataset for the global oceans, spanning 1900 to present at a monthly timestep. It includes two types of data products: (1) a database of quality-controled in situ profiles and (2) a spatially complete analyses at 1…
Main variables and Earth System components
Ocean Sub Surface Salinity Sub Surface Temperature Sub-surface data potential temperatureExperts contributing reviews
- Killick, Rachel

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., 2002). These data are supplied by many European National Meteorological Services and…
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
NASA data products are categorized into different "Levels". These are product dependent but the following description for OMI (Ozone Monitoring Instrument) data products is a general guideline: Level-1B (L1B): Products containing geolocated and calibrated…
Main variables and Earth System components
-
Formats
-
Timestep
-
Domain
-
Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- None

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 resolutions depending on the region and the time period. Data can be found at 0.05 deg or 0.1…
Experts contributing reviews
- Touma, Danielle | Martinez, Carlos

Years of record
- to
NOAA's Merged Land-Ocean Surface Temperature Analysis (MLOST) combines land surface air temperatures primarily from the Global Historical Climatology Network, Monthly (GHCN-M) version 3 with SSTs of the ERSSTv3b analysis into a comprehensive global surface…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature Ocean SST - sea surface temperature-
Timestep
- Monthly
-
Domain
- Global
Experts contributing reviews
- None

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 observational validation data set, with quantified uncertainties, for assessing climate model…
-
Timestep
- Sub-daily, Daily, Monthly
-
Domain
- Global
Experts contributing reviews
- None

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 period of 28 to 29 months. The alternating wind regimes develop at the top of the lower…
Experts contributing reviews
- None

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) fluxes under clear and all-sky conditions. EBAF is used for climate model evaluation,…
Experts contributing reviews
- Loeb, Norman

Years of record
- to
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 place observations from NASA’s Earth Observing System satellites into a climate context…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature Geopotential Height Precipitable water Water Vapor-
Timestep
- Sub-daily, Monthly
-
Domain
- Global
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
El Niño and La Niña, the two phases of ENSO, are sometimes described as opposites. However, there are asymmetries in their spatial structure, amplitude, duration and seasonal evolution. This leads to differing teleconnections and global impacts, as well as…
-
Formats
-
Timestep
-
Domain
- Tropics
-
Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- Santoso, Agus

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 continental US, southern Canada, and Mexico for the period 1950-2013. Gridded at 1/16°…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air Temperature Precipitation Wind-
Formats
- netCDF
-
Timestep
- Daily, Monthly
-
Domain
- North America
-
Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- Livneh, Ben

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 assimilated include surface pressures from the International Surface Pressure Databank v3.2.6…
-
Timestep
- Sub-daily, Daily, Monthly
-
Domain
- Global
Experts contributing reviews
- Poli, Paul

Years of record
Liquid water path (LWP) is one of the most important variables for modeling the atmosphere. LWP is measure of the weight of the liquid water droplets in the atmosphere above a unit surface area on the earth, given in units of kg m−2 (AMS Glossary). It is…
-
Formats
-
Timestep
-
Domain
-
Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
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 zonal surface winds. These variations consist of recognizable climate modes, such as the…
-
Formats
-
Timestep
-
Domain
- Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean
-
Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- Amaya, Dillon

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 studies, climate model evaluation, and operational monitoring of extreme climatic events.…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air Temperature Land Freeze/ThawExperts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
Argo is an array of over 3600 profiling floats distributed almost uniformly across the global oceans. First deployed in 2000, Argo floats provide temperature and salinity profiles from the surface to a depth of 2000m. The array has approximately 1 float for…
Main variables and Earth System components
Ocean Salinity Sub Surface Salinity Sub Surface TemperatureExperts contributing reviews
- Willis, Josh

Years of record
- to
ECMWF's current ocean reanalysis uses a sophisticated data assimilation methodology which includes a model bias correction. The ocean model used is forced by atmospheric daily surface fluxes, relaxed to SST and bias corrected. The Balmaseda et al (QJRMS 2013)…
Main variables and Earth System components
Ocean Ocean Heat Content Salinity Sea Level potential temperature u, v current components-
Timestep
- Monthly
-
Domain
- Global
-
Collections
- Climate Analysis Section (CAS) Data Catalog
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
HadSST3 provides monthly SST anomalies on a 5°x5° grid for 1850-present. The anomalies are derived from a 30-year climatology spanning 1961-90.Coverage is global but there is no interpolation; Thus, missing data occur in the final product. The primary input…
-
Timestep
- Monthly
-
Domain
- Global
Experts contributing reviews
- Kennedy, John

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 station records contain precipitation data only, however other key variables including maximum…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air Temperature PrecipitationExperts contributing reviews
- McKinnon, Karen

Years of record
- to
The NOAA Extended Reconstruction Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST) provides global, spatially complete SST data at a monthly timestep for 1854-present. Version3 is based upon statistical interpolation of the ICOADS release 2.4 data. Version 3 includes satellite…
-
Timestep
- Monthly
-
Domain
- Global
Experts contributing reviews
- Huang, Boyin | Livermore, Jay | Smith, Tom

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 on time scales of months to years. In order to achieve the TOGA goals, a strategy of…
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
- None

Years of record
- to
"The CMCC Global Ocean Physical Reanalysis System (C-GLORS) is used to simulate the state of the ocean in the last decades. It consists of a variational data assimilation system (OceanVar), capable of assimilating all in-situ observations along with altimetry…
Main variables and Earth System components
Ocean Ocean Heat Content SST - sea surface temperature Salinity Sub Surface Salinity Sub Surface Temperature mixed layer depth sea surface height u, v current componentsExperts contributing reviews
- Storto, Andrea

Years of record
- to
MODIS vegetation indices, produced on 16-day and monthly intervals and at multiple spatial resolutions, provide consistent spatial and temporal comparisons of vegetation canopy greenness, a composite property of leaf area, chlorophyll and canopy structure. Two…
Main variables and Earth System components
Land Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) NDVI" Normalized Difference Vegetation IndexExperts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
The NOAA Extended Reconstruction Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST) provides global, spatially complete SST data at a monthly timestep for 1854-present. Compared to the previous version, Version 4 uses the more extensive ICOADS Release 2.5 data and revised…
Experts contributing reviews
- Huang, Boyin

Years of record
- to
The goal of the MOD17 MODIS project is to provide continuous estimates of Gross/Net Primary Production (GPP/NPP) across Earth’s entire vegetated land surface. MOD17 GPP/NPP outputs are useful for natural resource and land management, global carbon cycle…
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
AIRS provides satellite retrieval of mid-tropospheric carbon dioxide even under cloudy conditions, without the use of a priori information from models. AIRS retrievals use cloud-cleared thermal IR radiance spectra in the 15 micron band with an accuracy better…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere CO Ozone: Tropospheric Biosphere CH4-Methane CO CO2-
Timestep
- Sub-daily, Daily, Monthly
-
Domain
- Global
-
Collections
- Carbon cycle
Experts contributing reviews
- None

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 algorithmic improvements have been made by the AIRS Project in conjunction with the AIRS Science Team…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Aerosols Air Temperature CO Geopotential Height Ozone: Tropospheric Precipitable water Specific HumidityExperts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
The Southern Ocean State Estimate (SOSE) is a model-generated best fit to Southern Ocean observations. As such, it provides a quantitatively useful climatology of the mean-state of the Southern Ocean. Technically, SOSE is a solution to the MITgcm. SOSE is a…
Main variables and Earth System components
Ocean 3D Velocity Bottom pressure SST - sea surface temperature Salinity Sub Surface Temperature mixed layer depth sea surface height u, v current components Wind Stress-
Formats
- binary
-
Timestep
- Daily, Monthly, Weekly, Annual
-
Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- Mazloff, Matthew

Years of record
- to
HadSST4 provides monthly SST anomalies on a 5°x5° grid for 1850-present. The anomalies are derived from a 30-year climatology spanning 1961-90. Coverage is global but there is no interpolation; Thus, missing data occur in the final product. This means that…
-
Formats
- netCDF
-
Timestep
- Monthly
-
Domain
- Global
-
Collections
- Diagnostic Data Sets
Experts contributing reviews
- Kennedy, John

Years of record
The radiative kernel technique is a method used to quantify radiative feedbacks in response to global warming. Radiative kernels are commonly calculated for the water vapor, lapse rate, temperature and albedo feedbacks. Radiative kernels are used to…
Main variables and Earth System components
Experts contributing reviews
- Pendergrass, Angeline

Years of record
- to
Maps of the monthly self-calibrating Palmer drought severity index (SCPDSI) have been calculated for the period 1901–2002 for the contiguous United States (20°–50°N and 130°–60°W) and Europe (35°–70°N, 10°W–60°E) with a spatial resolution of 0.5° × 0.5…
-
Formats
- ascii
-
Timestep
- Monthly
-
Domain
- Europe, North America
-
Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
ICOADS (International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set) is the most comprehensive archive of global marine surface climate observations available. Variables include SST, SLP, air temperature, wind speed, cloud amount, and others. There is no processing…
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