Years of Record: 1992/10 to 2010/12
The sea surface height relative to the geoid (the mean ocean surface of the Earth if the ocean is at rest) is derived from TOPEX/Poseidon, Envisat, Jason-1, and OSTM/Jason-2 altimetry measurements. Altimetry is a technique for measuring height. Satellite altimetry measures the time taken by a radar...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 1998/01 to 2007/12
CHOMPS utilizes all available passive microwave satellite estimates to develop improved global daily rainfall time series. No IR values are used. Satellite sources include SSM/I, AMSU, AMSR-E and TRMM. The most recent/accurate and consistent retrieval schemes have been used in the creation of the...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: binary
Timestep: Daily
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 1982/01 to 2009/12
"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 are derived from measurements of the...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Daily,Monthly,Pentad
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Stengel, Martin
Years of Record: 1979/01 to 2020/03
CMAP refers to a collection of precipitation data sets, though the 2.5°x2.5° global monthly version is probably the most widely used. This data set is constructed from an analysis of gauge data and satellite-derived precipitation estimates. An "enhanced" version (CMAP/A) is also available, which...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Monthly,Pentad
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Arkin, Phil | See Expert Guidance by Xie, PIngping
Years of Record: 2002/12 to 2017/10
"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 features are transported via spatial...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | binary
Timestep: Sub-daily,Daily
Domain: Global Years of Record: 1985/01 to 2005/12
"The Coral Reef Temperature Anomaly Database (CoRTAD) is a collection of sea surface temperature (SST) and related thermal stress metrics, developed specifically for coral reef ecosystem applications but relevant to other ecosystems as well. In addition to SST, it contains SST anomaly (SSTA,...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Weekly
Domain: Global Years of Record: 1992/10 to 2015/10
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 the ocean's thermal expansion,...
Formats: ascii
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Nerem, R.S.
Years of Record: 1978/11 to 2007/05
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 Scalable Earth Grids (EASE-Grids)....
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: binary
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: NH - Northern Hemisphere, SH - Southern Hemisphere Years of Record: 1987/01 to 2008/12
This data set (GSSTF 2C) has been superceded by GSSTF3 released in July 2012. The Goddard Satellite-based Surface Turbulent Fluxes (GSSTF) data set is part of the NASA Making Earth Science Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) Project. The objective of this project is to...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: binary | HDF-EOS
Timestep: Climatology,Daily,Monthly,Seasonal,Annual
Domain: Global Years of Record: 1998/01 to 2008/12
Version 3: The Goddard Satellite-based Surface Turbulent Fluxes (GSSTF) data set is part of the NASA Making Earth Science Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSUREs) Project. The objective of this project is to continually produce a uniform data set of sea surface turbulent fluxes...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: HDF-EOS
Timestep: Climatology,Sub-daily,Daily,Monthly
Domain: Global Years of Record: 1987/01 to 2008/12
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 state variables over the global ice free...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Climatology,Sub-daily,Monthly,Pentad
Domain: Global Years of Record: 1983/07 to 2009/12
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 window portions of the spectrum to...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | binary | HDF
Timestep: Climatology,Sub-daily,Monthly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Pincus, Robert
Years of Record: 1979/01 to 2011/09
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 the surface energy budget, hydrologic...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: binary | GeoTIFF | HDF
Timestep: Daily
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Kimball, John
Years of Record: 1998/01 to 2008/12
"This work describes a new climatology of cloud liquid water path (LWP), termed the University of Wisconsin (UWisc) climatology, derived from 18 yr of satellite-based passive microwave observations over the global oceans. The climatology is based on a modern retrieval methodology applied...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Climatology,Monthly
Domain: Global Years of Record: 2002/06 to 2011/10
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 polarized brightness temperatures at 89...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | HDF | GeoTIFF
Timestep: Daily
Domain: NH - Northern Hemisphere, SH - Southern Hemisphere, Antarctic, Arctic Years of Record: 1978/10 to 2014/12
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 algorithm itself and the long-term data set ("...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | binary
Timestep: Daily,Monthly
Domain: Antarctic, Arctic, NH - Northern Hemisphere, SH - Southern Hemisphere Years of Record: 1978/10 to 2014/12
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 and distributed by NSIDC. The NASA Team...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | binary
Timestep: Daily,Monthly
Domain: Antarctic, Arctic, NH - Northern Hemisphere, SH - Southern Hemisphere Years of Record: 1992/01 to 2008/04
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 ambiguity between low ice concentrations and...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: binary
Timestep: Daily
Domain: Antarctic, Arctic Years of Record: 1981/10 to 2021/04
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 the basis for calculating SSTs in sea...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Monthly,Weekly
Domain: Antarctic, Arctic, NH - Northern Hemisphere, SH - Southern Hemisphere Years of Record: 1978/10 to 2009/10
The Eumetsat Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Applications Facility provides a "reprocessed" data set of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice concentration for 1978-2009. Source data are the SMMR and SSM/I passive microwave brightness temperatures. Three algorithms are utilized: the Technical University of...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Daily
Domain: NH - Northern Hemisphere, SH - Southern Hemisphere, Antarctic, Arctic Years of Record: 1978/11 to 2019/12
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 suitable for studies of climate...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Daily,Monthly
Domain: Antarctic, Arctic, NH - Northern Hemisphere, SH - Southern Hemisphere
See Expert Guidance by Meier, Walter
Years of Record: 1987/07 to 2015/06
The SSM/I and SSMIS satellites are operated by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) and are part of NASA's Pathfinder Program. The instrumentation has been flown on a number of satellites: F-8 (1987), F-10 (November 1990), F-11 (December 1991), F-12 (August 1994), F-13 (March 1995),...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: binary
Timestep: Daily,Monthly,Weekly
Domain: Global The Ocean Product Suite (v7) from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) is available in netCDF (v4) format. The RSS Ocean Product Suite includes numerous data products for the SSMI/SSMIS instruments on the DMSP F08, F10, F11, F13, F14, F15, F17 polar orbiting satellites. These are part of the NASA Making...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Sub-daily,Daily,Monthly
Domain: Global Years of Record: 1981/01 to 2011/12
"The AVHRR Pathfinder Version 5.2 (PFV52) data set was computed using an entirely modernized system, based on SeaDAS and incorporating several key changes over the older Pathfinder V5.0 and V5.1 datasets. PFV52 is viewed as a significant step forward in preparation for the future Version 6 (PFV6)...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Sub-daily
Domain: Global Years of Record: 1981/09 to 2021/04
"NOAA’s Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface temperature (OISST, also known as Reynolds’ SST) is a series of global analysis products, including the weekly OISST on a 1° grid to the more recent daily on a ¼° grid. An SST analysis is a spatially gridded product created by interpolating and...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | binary
Timestep: Daily
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Banzon, Viva | See Expert Guidance by Reynolds, Richard
Years of Record: 1981/12 to 2020/03
The NOAA Optimal Interpolation SST analysis provides global, spatially complete SSTs on a weekly and monthly basis for 1982-present.
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii | binary
Timestep: Climatology,Monthly,Weekly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Banzon, Viva | See Expert Guidance by Reynolds, Richard
Years of Record: 1983/01 to 2005/12
The EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring (CM SAF) provides a regional dataset of surface solar radiation, incoming direct radiation and effective cloud albedo at uniquely high spatial (0.03 deg) and temporal (up to hourly) resolutions for 1983 to 2005. The data set covers...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Sub-daily,Daily,Monthly
Domain: Africa, Europe, South America, Atlantic Ocean
See Expert Guidance by Trentmann, Jörg
Years of Record: 2000/01 to 2012/09
Summary of 7 satellite-derived products providing a global snapshot of water isotope distribution in 3D, with good information on zonal gradients and seasonality.
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii | HDF
Timestep: Sub-daily,Daily
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Risi, Camille
Years of Record: 1988/01 to 2001/12
The NASA Water Vapor Project (NVAP) total column water vapor (aka, precipitable water) data sets comprise a combination of radiosonde observations, Television and Infrared Operational Satellite (TIROS) Operational Vertical Sounders (TOVS), and Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) data sets....
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: binary
Timestep: Daily,Monthly
Domain: Global 