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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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
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
The Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam Model (GLEAM) is a satellite remote sensing-based set of algorithms dedicated to the estimation of evaporation and soil moisture at global scales (Miralles et al. 2011). The current version of GLEAM (version 3) operates at…
Main variables and Earth System components
Biosphere land evaporation Land evapotranspiration Soil Moisture-
Formats
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Timestep
- Daily
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- Miralles, Diego | Koppa, Akash

Years of record
- to
A set of three estimates of land-cover types and annual transformations of land use are provided on a global 0.5°x0.5° grid at annual timesteps. The longest of the three estimates spans 1770-2010. The three estimates use three different data sets of cropland…
Main variables and Earth System components
Land Land Cover Type Land Use Conversion Vegetation CoverExperts contributing reviews
- Meiyappan, Prasanth

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

Years of record
- to
HadISD ("Hadley Centre Integrated Surface Database") is a compendium of subdaily weather-station data developed by the UK Met Office that is based on NOAA NCEI's Integrated Surface Database but with various quality-control checks implemented to remove stations…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature at 2m Dew Point Temperature Precipitation Sea Level Pressure Storm data WindExperts contributing reviews
- Raymond, Colin

Years of record
- to
The NOAA Optimal Interpolation (OI) v2 sea ice data set contains gridded, weekly or monthly resolution sea ice concentration estimates for both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. It is intended as a consistent analyses for input into SST analyses (and is…
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Formats
- netCDF
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Timestep
- Monthly, Weekly
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Collections
- Boundary Conditions
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
The largest publicly available collection of quality-controlled, globally-distributed, historical radiosonde and pilot balloon observations is the Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive (IGRA; Durre et al. 2006, 2018). First released in 2004, IGRA is maintained…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Dew Point Temperature Geopotential Height Multiple variables Relative Humidity WindExperts contributing reviews
- Durre, Imke | Korzeniewski, Bryant

Years of record
- to
The sea ice data derived from AMSR-E using the ARTIST sea ice (ASI) algorithm offer a factor of 4 finer spatial resolution than most sea ice data sets from passive microwave satellite instruments. ASI is based on the difference of vertically and horizontally…
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Timestep
- Daily
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Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
"This state-of-the-art database was established by IIASA and FAO in partnership with: ISRIC-World Soil Information which, together with the FAO, contributed recent regional soil and terrain databases together with the WISE soil profile database; The European…
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Formats
- netCDF | ARC/INFO ASCII GRID
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Timestep
-
Domain
- Global
-
Collections
- Carbon cycle
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
The Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Applications Facility (OSI SAF) of EUMETSAT provides sea ice concentration products for the Arctic and Antarctic based on satellite passive microwave data. The concentration value is expressed as the fractional percentage of the…
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Formats
- netCDF
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Timestep
- Daily
-
Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- Aaboe, Signe | Lavergne, Thomas

Years of record
- to
Summary of 7 satellite-derived products providing a global snapshot of water isotope distribution in 3D, with good information on zonal gradients and seasonality.
Experts contributing reviews
- Risi, Camille

Years of record
The Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI) is a global data base of glacier outlines. It is intended for estimates of ice volume and glacier mass at regional and global scales. The data are organized into 19 large regions, with a shapefile provided for each region.…
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
HadEX3 provides gridded, station-based indices of temperature- and precipitation- related climate extremes and supersedes HadEX2. It is intended for global and continental climate monitoring, climate change detection and attribution studies and climate model…
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Air Temperature at 2m Maximum Air Temperature Minimum Air Temperature Land Freeze/ThawExperts contributing reviews
- Dunn, Robert

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 by the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) and Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU). This page…
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Timestep
- Monthly
-
Domain
- Global
-
Collections
- Climate Data Record
Experts contributing reviews
- Mears, Carl

Years of record
- to
NASA Team sea ice refers to a well-known algorithm used to estimate sea ice concentration from passive microwave brightness temperatures. This page discusses the algorithm itself and the long-term data set ("NSIDC 0051") produced by scientists at NASA Goddard…
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Timestep
- Daily, Monthly
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Collections
- Diagnostic Data Sets, NCAR-DOE-CESM, seaicediagnostics
Experts contributing reviews
- None

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, zonal and meridional winds at 10-meter high, and zonal and meridional components of wind stress.…
Experts contributing reviews
- Tokinaga, Hiroki

Years of record
- to
This dataset consists of seasonally resolved timeseries of surface pressure at 18 Antarctic research stations, spanning 1905-2013. Routine meteorological observations began at most of these stations only around 1960, leaving a very short instrumental record on…
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Formats
- ascii | Spreadsheet
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Timestep
- Seasonal
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Domain
- Antarctic
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Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- None

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 over land. Following the synoptic code (WMO, 1974), observers report the fraction of sky dome covered…
Experts contributing reviews
- Norris, Joel

Years of record
- to
"A dataset of historical monthly streamflow at the farthest downstream stations for the world’s 925 largest ocean-reaching rivers has been created for community use. Compared with previous studies, the new dataset has improved homogeneity and enables more…
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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
Speleothems provide globally distributed, seasonal to multi-annual resolution climate records encoded in multiple proxies including oxygen and carbon stable isotopes, and trace elements. Speleothems, such as stalagmites and flowstones, are secondary cave…
Main variables and Earth System components
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Formats
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Timestep
- Annual, Decadal, Irregular
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- Kaushal, Nikita | Lechleitner, Franziska

Years of record
The land surface is a dynamic and complex component of the Earth system, shaping climate and biogeochemical cycles and serving as the origin of many anthropogenic impacts on the planet. Comprising complex and interactive organic and inorganic systems (soils,…
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Formats
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Timestep
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Domain
-
Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- Mankin, Justin | Lesk, Corey

Years of record
- to
"The Scripps O2Program measures changes in atmospheric oxygen levels from air samples collected at stations around the world. This sampling network provides a global and hemispheric perspective on oxygen variability. " Stations include: Alert, NWT, Canada Cold…
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Formats
- ascii
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Timestep
- Daily, Monthly
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Domain
-
Collections
- Carbon cycle
Experts contributing reviews
- None

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-OFURO2 for the estimation of sensible and latent heat fluxes.
Main variables and Earth System components
Atmosphere Specific Humidity Wind Stress Latent & sensible heat flux Ocean Surface FluxExperts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
The purpose of the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) Project is to provide quantitative data on global ocean bio-optical properties and to assess the oceans' role in the global carbon cycle. SeaWiFS data are being used to help clarify the…
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Formats
- HDF
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Timestep
- Climatology, Daily, Monthly, Seasonal, Annual
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Carbon cycle
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
"The Landsat Program provides the longest continuous space-based record of Earth’s land in existence. Since 1972, Landsat satellites have collected measurements of Earth’s continents and surrounding coastal regions that have enabled people to study forests,…
Main variables and Earth System components
Biosphere NPP: Net Primary Production Land Land Cover Type Vegetation Cover-
Formats
-
Timestep
- Sub-daily
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Carbon cycle
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
The Walsh and Chapman Sea Ice Data Set provides a long record of Arctic sea ice concentrations on a monthly basis for 1870-2011. Historical observations were gridded and combined with satellite-derived sea ice concentrations for the recent decades. Mostly…
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Formats
- ascii
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Timestep
- Monthly
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Domain
- NH - Northern Hemisphere, Arctic
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Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- Chapman, William

Years of record
- to
Using updated data from the World Ocean Database (Boyer et al, 2009) and improved ARGO profiling data, new estimates of ocean heat content and thermospheric sea level change (0-2000m) for the period 1955-2010 are derived.
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
This data product contains global daily 1 km resolution surface soil moisture (SM) derived from the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) L-band radiometer observations. Specifically, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land surface temperature…
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Formats
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Timestep
- Daily
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- Lakshmi, Venkataraman | Fang, Bin

Years of record
- to
Bootstrap sea ice refers to a well-known algorithm used to estimate sea ice concentration from passive microwave brightness temperatures. It can be applied to data from many satellite instruments, such as SMMR, SSMI, and AMSR-E. This page discusses the…
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Timestep
- Daily, Monthly
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Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- None

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 ocean). Daytime and nighttime averages, as well as the diurnal average (average of day and night), are…
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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
NOAA’s Global Monitory Laboratory has measured atmospheric methane levels since 1983 at a global cooperative greenhouse gases sampling network, which currently includes more than 50 sites. This measurement network is unique among greenhouse gases monitoring…
Experts contributing reviews
- Lan, Xin

Years of record
- to
The Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) is an optically based spaceborne lightning detection instrument that has been hosted on two different platforms – the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite (TRMM; 1998-2015; Kummerow et al. 1998) and the International…
Experts contributing reviews
- Lang, Timothy

Years of record
- to
JRA-55C is a fixed observing system atmospheric reanalysis that uses the same model and data assimilation scheme as JRA-55. The observations assimilated include surface station data, radiosondes, tropical cyclone retrievals and wind profilers. No satellite…
Main variables and Earth System components
Experts contributing reviews
- Kobayashi, Chiaki

Years of record
- to
A global data set of the frozen state of the land surface (free-thaw (FT) status) has been developed spanning 1979-present at a daily timestep and 25 x 25 km spatial resolution. Based on passive microwave remote sensing, the FT parameter is closely related to…
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Timestep
- Daily
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Domain
- Global
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Collections
- Climate Data Record
Experts contributing reviews
- Kimball, John

Years of record
- to
This data set comprises global, monthly satellite-derived snow water equivalent (SWE) climatologies from November 1978 through May 2007, and is updated with more recent data periodically. Global data are gridded to the Northern and Southern 25 km Equal-Area…
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Formats
- binary
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Timestep
- Monthly
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Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
Using data from the Indian Ocean Hydrobase (IOHB) (Kobayashi et al., 2006), Hydrobase2 (Curry, 2002), and Southern Ocean Atlas (Orsi and Whitworth, 2010) databases along with the improved spatial and temporal coverage provided by ARGO profiling data, new…
Main variables and Earth System components
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
The Hadley Centre sea-surface temperature diurnal temperature range climatology is a 5x5 degree gridded climatology of the diurnal range of sea surface temperature as measured by drifting buoys.
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
PACIFICA (PACIFic ocean Interior CArbon) was an international collaborative project for the data synthesis of ocean interior carbon and its related parameters in the Pacific Ocean. The North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES), Section of Carbon and…
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Formats
- ascii
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Timestep
- Sub-daily
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Domain
- Pacific Ocean
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Collections
- Carbon cycle
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
"This data set offers users 25 km Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent represented by four different variables. Three of the snow cover variables are derived from the Interactive Multisensor Snow and Ice Mapping System, MODIS Cloud Gap Filled Snow Cover, and…
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Formats
- netCDF
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Timestep
- Daily
-
Domain
- NH - Northern Hemisphere
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Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
The AMSR-E/NASA Team 2 (NT2) data set of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice concentration is available at daily timesteps and 12.5 km (optionally 25km) spatial resolution for 2002-2011. NT2, an extension of the original NASA Team algorithm, uses AMSR-E 89GHz channels…
Experts contributing reviews
- None

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 historical part of the AC&C/SPARC ozone database spans the period 1850 to 2009 and consists of…
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Formats
- netCDF
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Timestep
- Monthly
-
Domain
- Global
-
Collections
- Boundary Conditions, CMIP5-recommended, AC&C/SPARC ozone
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) distributes daily, weekly, and monthly products which includes snow water equivalent. Note: "On 04 October 2011, the AMSR-E instrument on board the Aqua satellite stopped producing data…
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Formats
- HDF-EOS
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Timestep
- Daily, Monthly, Weekly
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Domain
- NH - Northern Hemisphere
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Collections
- None
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
"This data set offers users weekly 100 km Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent represented by three different variables. Two of the variables are derived from individual source products: the NOAA/NCDC Northern Hemisphere Snow Cover Extent Climate Data Record…
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Formats
- netCDF
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Timestep
- Weekly
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Domain
- NH - Northern Hemisphere
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Collections
- Climate Data Record
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
Bodeker Scientific produces global, daily, total column ozone database by combining measurements from a number of different satellite-based instruments. Offsets and drifts between the different datasets are resolved through comparisons with the Dobson and…
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
SOCAT (Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas) represents an effort to "provide a comprehensive, publicly available, regularly updated, global data set of marine surface CO2, which had been subject to quality control (QC)." The data sets are comprised of observations (ship…
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Formats
- netCDF
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Timestep
- Climatology, Monthly, Annual
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Domain
- Global
-
Collections
- Carbon cycle
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
The CARINA (CARbon dioxide IN the Atlantic Ocean) data synthesis project is an international collaborative effort of the EU IP CARBOOCEAN, and US partners. It has produced a merged internally consistent data set of open ocean subsurface measurements for…
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Formats
- ascii
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Timestep
- Sub-daily
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Domain
- Arctic, Atlantic Ocean, Southern Ocean
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Collections
- Carbon cycle
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
The NASA Team 2 (NT2) / SSMI data set of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice concentration is available at daily timesteps and 25km spatial resolution for 1992-2008. NT2, an extension of the original NASA Team algorithm, uses SSMI 85GHz channels to help resolve…
Experts contributing reviews
- None

Years of record
- to
"The Rapid Climate Change programme (RAPID) explores what causes rapid switches in climate, with a main (but not exclusive) focus on the Atlantic Ocean's thermohaline circulation." "A principal objective of the RAPID programme is the development and maintenance…
Main variables and Earth System components
Ocean Salinity Sub Surface Temperature heat flux streamfunction-
Timestep
- Sub-daily
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Domain
- Atlantic Ocean
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Collections
- Diagnostic Data Sets
Experts contributing reviews
- None