Climate Data
The Climate Data Guide is a high-traffic expert knowledge portal providing concise and reliable information on the climate data that are essential for measuring and predicting physical climate risk.
Currently, 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.
Citation: Please link to this website in your work that draws upon material from this website, and cite this paper:
Schneider, D. P., C. Deser, J. Fasullo, and K. E. Trenberth, 2013: Climate Data Guide Spurs Discovery and Understanding. Eos Trans. AGU, 94, 121–122, https://doi.org/10.1002/2013eo130001.
=> Additionally, each dataset page with expert-written guidance has its own citation example on the individual page, such that the experts who wrote the guidance may be credited. Finally, responsible use and citation of datasets is strongly encouraged.
Climate datasets

Years of record
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The NSIDC Sea Ice Index is a suite of easy-to-use sea ice analyses to track changes in Arctic and Antarctic sea ice. The product is produced and supported by the NOAA at NSIDC group and consists of browse imagery and data text files (CSV or Excel format). The…
Experts contributing reviews
- Meier, Walter

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

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
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 Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is scanning instrument that makes measurements in 36 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared at spatial resolutions from 250 m to 1 km. There are MODIS instruments aboard two sun-…
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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
This data set contains a global (excluding Antarctica) 1 km map of permafrost zonation. It is an estimate of to what degree permafrost exists in a region nearly everywhere, or only in the most favorable conditions. These local conditions affecting permafrost…
Experts contributing reviews
- Gruber, Stephan

Years of record
- to
The Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) ocean temperature analysis features global coverage of the oceans, at 1° x1° horizontal resolution on 41 vertical levels from 1-2000m, and monthly resolution from 1940 to present. As such, it is aimed at studies of…
Main variables and Earth System components
Ocean Ocean Heat Content Sea Level Sub Surface TemperatureExperts contributing reviews
- Cheng, Lijing

Years of record
- to
The merged Hadley-OI sea surface temperature (SST) and sea ice concentration (SIC) data sets were specifically developed as surface forcing data sets for AMIP style uncoupled simulations of the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM). The Hadley Centre's SST/SIC…
Main variables and Earth System components
Cryosphere Sea Ice Concentration Ocean SST - sea surface temperature-
Formats
- netCDF
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Timestep
- Monthly
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
"The Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) is the largest element of the intraseasonal (30–90 days) variability in the tropical atmosphere. It is a large-scale coupling between atmospheric circulation and tropical deep convection.[1][2] Rather than being a standing…
Main variables and Earth System components
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Formats
-
Timestep
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Domain
-
Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
The COBE data set is a spatially complete, interpolated 1°x1° SST product for 1891 to present. It combines SSTs from ICOADS release 2.0, the Japanese Kobe collection, and reports from ships and buoys. Data are gridded using optimal interpolation. As in HadISST…
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
The global mean sea level timeseries is an excellent, integrative indicator of climate change, providing a record independent of common metrics like global surface air temperature. The major contributions to the observed sea level trend of 3.3 mm/year include…
Experts contributing reviews
- Nerem, R.S.

Years of record
- to
Tree-ring drought atlases provide a paleoclimate analog to modern drought indices, most commonly the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI). Produced on a regular lat-lon grid for regions such as North America, Europe, and Australia, these centuries-long…
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Timestep
- Annual
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Domain
- North America
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Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- Cook, Edward

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 is clearly dominated by the NAO structure in the Atlantic sector. Although there are some…
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Formats
- ascii
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Timestep
- Seasonal
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Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- Phillips, Adam

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 1948-2009 at monthly resolution. This data set serves as a set of common atmospheric boundary…
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
-
Collections
- Diagnostic Data Sets, NCAR-DOE-CESM, atmosdiagnostics, oceandiagnostics
Experts contributing reviews
- Yeager, Stephen

Years of record
- to
Spanning 1871-present at monthly timesteps, HadISST provides the longest gridded sea ice data available for both the Arctic and Antarctic. It is a 1° x 1° spatially infilled data set that is It is intended as a consistent analyses for input into SST analyses or…
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Timestep
- Monthly
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Collections
- Boundary Conditions
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
World Ocean Atlas 2009 (WOA09) is a set of objectively analyzed (1 degree grid) climatological fields of in situ temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, Apparent Oxygen Utilization (AOU), percent oxygen saturation, phosphate, silicate, and nitrate at standard…
Main variables and Earth System components
Ocean Dissolved Oxygen SST - sea surface temperature Salinity Sub Surface Salinity Sub Surface Temperature oxygen saturation phosphate silicate-
Timestep
- Climatology, Monthly, Seasonal, Annual
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Diagnostic Data Sets, NCAR-DOE-CESM, oceandiagnostics
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
Daymet provides long-term, continuous, gridded estimates of daily weather and climatology variables by interpolating and extrapolating ground-based observations through statistical modeling techniques. The Daymet data products provide driver data for…
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
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- Thornton, Peter E

Years of record
Cloud processes and feedbacks are recognized as the largest uncertainty in climate model projections of climate change. Progress in understanding the roles of clouds in climate change has in part been hampered by the lack of a consistent definition of clouds…
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Formats
-
Timestep
-
Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Diagnostic Data Sets, NCAR-DOE-CESM, atmosdiagnostics
Experts contributing reviews
- Kay, Jennifer

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 Earth's radiation budget and climate. It flies in formation with five other satellites in the…
Experts contributing reviews
- None

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 ERA-Interim reanalysis, although other datasets, including climate models, could be used. …
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Formats
- ascii
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Timestep
- Seasonal, Annual
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Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- Bracegirdle, Thomas J.

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 assimilated include surface pressures from the International Surface Pressure Databank v3.2.6 and…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Multiple variables Cryosphere Sea Ice Concentration OceanExperts contributing reviews
- Laloyaux, Patrick

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 sensing capabilities of the CloudSat radar and the CALISPSO lidar. The data set provides monthly…
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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
"CLARA-A1 (CLoud, Albedo and RAdiation dataset, AVHRR-based, version 1) is a global dataset of cloud properties, surface albedo and surface radiation products, generated by the EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring (CM SAF). The 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

Years of record
- to
"The Surface Solar Radiation Data Set - Heliosat (SARAH) is a satellite-based climatology of the solar surface irradiance (SIS), the surface direct normalized irradiance (DNI) and the effective cloud albedo (CAL) derived from satellite observations of the…
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Formats
- netCDF
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Timestep
- Sub-daily, Daily, Monthly
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Collections
- Climate Data Record
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
HadEX2 provides gridded, station-based indices of temperature- and precipitation- related climate extremes. It is intended for climate change detection and attribution studies and climate model evaluation. Twenty-nine indices, including daily maximum and…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air Temperature Land Freeze/ThawExperts contributing reviews
- None

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 the Polar Weather Forecast Model (PWRF) and the WRF-VAR and High Resolution Land Data…
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
The Group for High-Resolution Sea Surface Temperature (SST; GHRSST) provides a new generation of global high-resolution (
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
As defined by a US National Research Council committee, a Climate Data Record (CDR) is "a time series of measurements of sufficient length, consistency and continuity to determine climate variability and change." In the US, agencies such as NASA and NOAA have…
Main variables and Earth System components
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Formats
-
Timestep
-
Domain
-
Collections
- Climate Data Record
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
The Snow Cover Extent Climate Data Record extends from the late 1960s to present. Historical analyses based on visual inspection have been digitized and combined with modern multi-spectral remote sensing to produce a seamless record on a hemispheric scale. The…
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Timestep
- Monthly, Weekly
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Domain
- North America
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Collections
- Climate Data Record, Diagnostic Data Sets, NCAR-DOE-CESM, landdiagnostics
Experts contributing reviews
- Estilow, Thomas W. | Robinson, David

Years of record
Data assimilation is the process of combining observations from a wide variety of sources and forecast output from a weather prediction model. The resulting analysis is considered to be the 'best' estimate of the state of the atmosphere at a particular instant…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere-
Formats
-
Timestep
-
Domain
-
Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- None

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. CloudSat is one of a constellation of satellites known as the A-Train (Cloudsat, CALIPSO, PARASOL,…
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
High resolution (0.25°) SSTs were derived from the AMSR-E, a passive microwave radiometer flying on NASA's AQUA satellite. Remote Sensing Systems distributes the data in high spatial and temporal (daily, weekly, monthly) resolutions for both daytime and…
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
Multi-Source Weighted-Ensemble Precipitation (MSWEP) is a sub-daily precipitation dataset with full global coverage at 0.1° resolution, spanning the period 1979 to present. It is updated in near real-time with a latency of three hours, making it suitable for…
Experts contributing reviews
- Beck, Hylke

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 fluxes constructed using optimal interpolation. Input for the period 1973 to 2006 are ICOADS…
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Formats
- netCDF
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Timestep
- Monthly
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Climate Data Record
Experts contributing reviews
- Kent, Elizabeth

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 (evaporation minus precipitation) as well as related turbulent heat fluxes and atmospheric…
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
- None

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, ThreadEx provides the top 3 record high and low daily maximum temperatures, the top 3 record high and…
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
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
Long time series of gridded surface temperature and precipitation data derived from homongenized station data. The gridded anomalies were produced from GHCN-M bias corrected data. GHCN data and CAMS (Climate Anomaly Monitoring System) are combined to produce a…
Main variables and Earth System components
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
The NOAA/NSIDC Climate Data Record (CDR) of sea ice concentration is available at 25 x 25 km spatial resolution in daily or monthly timesteps for 1987-2014. It provides a consistent interpretation of sea ice for the satellite record, with the intent of being…
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Formats
- netCDF
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Timestep
- Daily, Monthly
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Collections
- Climate Data Record
Experts contributing reviews
- Meier, Walter

Years of record
The circumpolar permafrost and ground ice data contribute to a unified international data set that depicts the distribution and properties of permafrost and ground ice in the Northern Hemisphere (20°N to 90°N). The re-gridded data set shows discontinuous,…
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Timestep
- Climatology
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Domain
- NH - Northern Hemisphere
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Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
A high resolution (32km x 29 pressure levels) data set focused upon the North American Region. Relative to the NCEP-DOE (R2) it has a much improved land-hydrology, diurnal cycle and land-atmosphere interaction. As such, it can be considered a second generation…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature Geopotential Height Precipitable water Land-
Formats
- GRIB
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Timestep
- Climatology, Sub-daily, Monthly
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Domain
- North America
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Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- None

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 be computed by vertically integrating reanalysis fields and employing suitable corrections (e.g.…
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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
- None

Years of record
The GLobal Ocean Data Analysis Project (GLODAP) is a cooperative effort to coordinate global synthesis projects funded through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and the National Science Foundation (…
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Timestep
- Climatology
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Carbon cycle
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
Coral records are one of the main types of high-resolution (annual to sub-annual) paleoclimate proxies, providing timeseries of environmental conditions reaching hundreds to thousands of years into the past in the tropics, the central driver of the global…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Evaporation Evaporation-Precipitation Precipitation Ocean Salinity SST - sea surface temperature-
Formats
- ascii | HTML Table | Linked Paleo Data (LiPD) | Matlab
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Timestep
-
Domain
- Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Tropics
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Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- Lawman, Allison

Years of record
- to
The most up-to-date version is known as Kaplan Extended SST v2, which combines statistically infilled grids of UK Met Office SSTs for 1856-1981 with a statistically reduced and coarser resolution version of Smith and Reynolds Optimally Interpolated (OI) SSTs…
Experts contributing reviews
- Kaplan, Alexy

Years of record
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 (atmosphere, ocean, ice, etc) determine the climate. Ultimately, the net difference between incoming…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Budget Evaporation Evaporation-Precipitation Radiation-
Formats
-
Timestep
-
Domain
-
Collections
- Climate Analysis Section (CAS) Data Catalog
Experts contributing reviews
- None

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, global record of cloud properties. ISCCP uses observations in the visible and infrared…
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Timestep
- Climatology, Sub-daily, Monthly
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Domain
- Global
Experts contributing reviews
- Pincus, Robert

Years of record
- to
Annual net land-atmosphere carbon flux and net flux of carbon to the atmosphere due to land-use and land-use change (LULUC) are estimated using an integrated assessment model and three historical reconstructions of land use and land use conversion. The data…
Main variables and Earth System components
Biosphere CO2 Land CO2 Land-Atmosphere flux Land Cover Type Land Use ConversionExperts contributing reviews
- Meiyappan, Prasanth

Years of record
- to
A regularly updated monthly timeseries of ocean heat content, based on Argo profiles, is integrated over 10-1500m depth and the latitudes 60°S-60°N. Coverage begins in 2005. It is estimated based on the method described in von Schuckmann and Le Traon (2011) and…
Experts contributing reviews
- von Schuckmann, Karina

Years of record
- to
HadIOD (Met Office Hadley Centre Integrated Ocean Database) is a global database of in situ ocean temperature and salinity observations, spanning 1850-present on a daily timestep. It is somewhat unique among temperature and salinity datasets in that it combines…
Main variables and Earth System components
Ocean Salinity SST - sea surface temperature Sub Surface TemperatureExperts contributing reviews
- Atkinson, Chris

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 climatology) and actual temperatures are distributed in two separate files. The dataset is designed…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air TemperatureExperts contributing reviews
- None