Years of Record: 1978/12 to 2019/12
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 significant correlations with both...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: ascii | csv
Timestep: Monthly,Seasonal,Annual
Domain: Antarctic, SH - Southern Hemisphere, Southern Ocean
See Expert Guidance by Hosking, Scott
Years of Record: 1904/12 to 2013/11
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 which to assess Antarctic...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: ascii | Spreadsheet
Timestep: Seasonal
Domain: Antarctic 
Years of Record: 1950/12 to 2015/11
APHRODITE’s (Asian Precipitation - Highly-Resolved Observational Data Integration Towards Evaluation) gridded precipitation is a set of long-term (1951 onward) continental-scale daily products that is based on a dense network of rain-gauge data for Asia including the Himalayas, South and Southeast...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii | binary
Timestep: Climatology,Daily
Domain: Asia
See Expert Guidance by Maeda, Mio | See Expert Guidance by Yasutomi, Natsuko | See Expert Guidance by Yatagai, Akiyo
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 implications for ENSO predictability. The...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Domain: Tropics
See Expert Guidance by Santoso, Agus
Years of Record: 1869/12 to 2021/02
The Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) has been identified as a coherent mode of natural variability occurring in the North Atlantic Ocean with an estimated period of 60-80 years. It is based upon the average anomalies of sea surface temperatures (SST) in the North Atlantic basin, typically...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Monthly,Decadal
Domain: Atlantic Ocean, NH - Northern Hemisphere
See Expert Guidance by Trenberth, Kevin | See Expert Guidance by Zhang, Rong
Years of Record: 1992/09 to 2010/11
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: 1799/12 to 2012/08
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 span 1800-2010 and are aggregated for...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: binary
Timestep: Annual
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Meiyappan, Prasanth
Years of Record: 1987/06 to 2016/04
The CCMP wind analysis is a near-global, high spatial and temporal resolution gridded dataset of surface wind vectors spanning 1987-present. The input data are a combination of inter-calibrated satellite data from numerous radiometers and scatterometers and in-situ data from moored buoys....
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Sub-daily
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Ricciardulli, Lucrezia
The International Geosphere–Biosphere Programme (IGBP) defines ecosystems surface classifications. The CERES (Clouds and Earth's Radiant Energy System)10-minute data can be used to derive the land categories. Other, finer resolution gridded surface data are available.
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | binary
Timestep: Climatology
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 1978/12 to 2013/11
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 a statistical downscaling of the...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: GeoTIFF
Timestep: Climatology,Monthly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Karger, Dirk
Years of Record: 1997/12 to 2007/11
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: 1981/12 to 2013/11
"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 data, and a forecast step...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Daily,Monthly,Weekly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Storto, Andrea
Years of Record: 2002/11 to 2017/09
"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: 1948/12 to 2006/11
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 conditions that has been used...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global
Atmosphere | Evaporation | Precipitation | Radiation | Wind Stress | Land | Runoff and Streamflow | Ocean | Surface Flux
See Expert Guidance by Yeager, Stephen
Years of Record: 1984/12 to 2005/11
"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: 1947/12 to 2018/05
A gauge-based analysis of daily precipitation has been constructed over the global land areas. Gauge reports from over 30,000 stations are collected from multiple sources including GTS, COOP, and other national and international agencies. Quality control is performed through comparisons with...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: binary
Timestep: Daily
Domain: Global Years of Record: 1900/12 to 2002/11
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 
Years of Record: 1900/12 to 2015/11
The CRU TS series of data sets (CRU TS = Climatic Research Unit Timeseries) contain monthly timeseries of precipitation, daily maximum and minimum temperatures, cloud cover, and other variables covering Earth's land areas for 1901-2015 (CRU TS4.0 is a recent release). The data set is gridded to 0....
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Climatology,Monthly
Domain: Global Years of Record: 1979/12 to 2015/11
Developed by Dr. Peter E Thornton to fulfill the need for daily climatological data necessary for plant growth model inputs, Daymet generates daily, gridded surfaces of temperature, precipitation, humidity, and radiation over large regions and takes into account areas of complex terrain.
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Climatology,Daily
Domain: North America 
Years of Record: 1949/12 to 2019/06
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 other data providers across Europe and...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Daily
Domain: Europe
See Expert Guidance by van der Schrier, Gerard
"FLUXNET is a global network of micrometeorological flux measurement sites that measure the exchanges of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and energy between the biosphere and atmosphere. At present over 140 sites are operating on a long-term and continuous basis. Vegetation under study includes...
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Sub-daily
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 1981/12 to 2007/11
Global, spatially and temporally explicit estimates of carbon and water fluxes derived from empirical up-scaling eddy covariance measurements would constitute a new and possibly powerful data stream to study the variability of the global terrestrial carbon and water cycle. Jung et al (2009)
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: binary
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global Years of Record: 1947/12 to 2004/11
"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 reliable assessments of decadal and long-...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii | binary
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 1996/12 to 2015/11
The Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED) "combines satellite information on fire activity and vegetation productivity to estimate gridded monthly burned area and fire emissions, as well as scalars that can be used to calculate higher temporal resolution emissions."
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: HDF
Timestep: Daily,Monthly,Annual
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 1869/12 to 2014/04
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 high resolution 'real-time' product.
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 1879/12 to 2016/02
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 temperature, minimum temperature,...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: ascii
Timestep: Daily
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by McKinnon, Karen
Years of Record: 1950/12 to 2014/01
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. Twenty-six indices, including daily...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global Years of Record: 2005/12 to 2012/11
The Group for High-Resolution Sea Surface Temperature (SST; GHRSST) provides a new generation of global high-resolution (
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Sub-daily,Daily
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 1899/12 to 2014/11
A series of gridded temperature and precipitation data sets. Station records that served as bases for the Terrestrial Air Temperature: 1900-2014 Gridded Monthly Time Series (Version 4.01) and Terrestrial Precipitation: 1900-2014 Gridded Monthly Time Series (Version 4.01) archives are used here to...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Climatology,Monthly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Matsuura, Kenji
Years of Record: 1849/12 to 2020/11
HadCRUT5 is one of the main datasets used to monitor global and regional surface temperature variability and trends. It is a global surface temperature product that combines land surface air temperatures from CRUTEM5 with SSTs from HadSST4. HadCRUT5 is a departure from its predecessors (HadCRUT4,...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Hausfather, Zeke
Years of Record: 1992/09 to 2015/09
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: 1978/10 to 2007/04
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: 1879/12 to 2020/02
NASA Goddard's Global Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP) combines land surface air temperatures primarily from the GHCN-M version 4 with SSTs of the ERSSTv5 analysis into a comprehensive global surface temperature data set spanning 1880 to the present at monthly resolution, on a 2x2 degree...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii | binary
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Lenssen, Nathan
Years of Record: 1849/12 to 2020/01
Extending back to 1850 and frequently updated, HadCRUT4 is the longest data set of its type. HadCRUT4 is a combination of the global land surface temperature data set, CRUTEM4 and the global SST data set, HadSST3. HadCRUT4 is different from the most closely comparable products (e.g. NASA GISTEMP...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii | KML
Timestep: Climatology,Monthly
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 1870/12 to 2020/09
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 temperature data set spanning 1880 to the...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | binary
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 1700/12 to 2019/06
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures (BEST) are a set of data products, originally a gridded reconstruction of land surface air temperature records spanning 1701-present, and now including an 1850-present merged land-ocean data set that combines the land analysis with an interpolated...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Climatology,Daily,Monthly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Cowtan, Kevin
Years of Record: 1849/12 to 2013/09
Global surface temperature data sets are an essential resource for monitoring and understanding climate variability and climate change. The most commonly used data sets combine historical observations of near surface air temperatures at land stations with global data sets of sea surface...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii | binary
Timestep: Climatology,Monthly
Domain: Global Years of Record: 1890/12 to 2018/11
The GPCC provides gridded gauge-analysis products derived from quality controlled station data. Two products are for climate: (a) the Full Data Reanalysis Product (1901-2010) is recommended for global and regional water balance studies, calibration/validation of remote sensing based rainfall...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Climatology,Daily,Monthly
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 1996/09 to 2015/10
The 1DD product provides precipitation estimates on a 1-degree grid over the entire globe at 1-day (daily) for the period October 1996 - present. Both the Pentad and 1DD products are consistent with the Version 2 monthly product in the sense that the Pentad and 1DD approximately sum to the monthly...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | binary
Timestep: Daily
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Pendergrass, Angeline
Years of Record: 1978/12 to 2020/06
Data from rain gauge stations, satellites, and sounding observations have been merged to estimate monthly rainfall on a 2.5-degree global grid from 1979 to the present. The careful combination of satellite-based rainfall estimates provides the most complete analysis of rainfall available to date...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | binary
Timestep: Climatology,Monthly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Pendergrass, Angeline | See Expert Guidance by Wang, Jian-Jian
Years of Record: 2001/12 to 2012/08
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 acceleration. Onboard GPS instruments determine...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Daily,Monthly
Domain: Global
Cryosphere | Glaciers | Ice Sheet Mass | Land | Groundwater | Water Storage | surface water | Ocean | Bottom pressure
See Expert Guidance by Swenson, Sean
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.
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: ascii
Timestep: Climatology
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 1900/12 to 2010/11
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 minimum temperatures, number of frost days,...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Monthly,Annual
Domain: Global Years of Record: 1949/12 to 2011/11
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...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: ascii
Timestep: Daily
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 2013/08
"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 Soil Bureau Network, which provided...
Formats: netCDF | ARC/INFO ASCII GRID
Domain: Global Years of Record: 1799/12 to 2010/11
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 and pastureland. Common input data...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Annual
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Meiyappan, Prasanth
Years of Record: 1986/12 to 2008/11
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: 1898/12 to 2021/06
The principal component (PC)-based indices of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) are the time series of the leading Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) of SLP anomalies over the Atlantic sector, 20°-80°N, 90°W-40°E. These indices are used to measure the NAO throughout the year, tracking the...
Formats: ascii
Timestep: Monthly,Seasonal,Annual
Domain: Atlantic Ocean 
Years of Record: 1864/12 to 2020/01
The winter (December thru March) station-based index of the NAO is based on the difference of normalized sea level pressure (SLP) between Lisbon, Portugal and Stykkisholmur/Reykjavik, Iceland since 1864. Positive values of the NAO index are typically associated with stronger-than-average...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: ascii
Timestep: Monthly,Seasonal,Annual
Domain: Atlantic Ocean
See Expert Guidance by Hurrell, James
IBTrACS (International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship) provides global tropical cyclone best track data in a centralized location to aid our understanding of the distribution, frequency, and intensity of tropical cyclones worldwide. The World Meteorological Organization Tropical Cyclone...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii | shapefile
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Schreck, Carl
Years of Record: 1987/12 to 2006/11
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:
Formats: netCDF | ascii | binary
Timestep: Daily,Monthly
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 1971/12 to 2013/08
"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, food production, water and land use,...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Timestep: Sub-daily
Domain: Global Years of Record: 1978/12 to 2011/08
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: 1949/12 to 2013/11
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° horizontal resolution (~ 6km), the data have...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Daily,Monthly
Domain: North America
See Expert Guidance by Livneh, Ben
Years of Record: 1956/12 to 2015/08
The station-based index of the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) is based on the zonal pressure difference between the latitudes of 40S and 65S. As such, the SAM index measures a "see-saw" of atmospheric mass between the middle and high latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. Positive values of...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: ascii
Domain: Antarctic, SH - Southern Hemisphere, Southern Ocean
See Expert Guidance by Marshall, Gareth
Years of Record: 1998/12 to 2011/12
"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 passive microwave brightness...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Daily
Domain: NH - Northern Hemisphere 
Years of Record: 1966/09 to 2012/11
"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 and Defense Meteorological Satellite...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Weekly
Domain: NH - Northern Hemisphere Years of Record: 1869/12 to 2020/07
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 version 1.1 (HADISST1), which is derived...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global, Antarctic, Arctic, NH - Northern Hemisphere, SH - Southern Hemisphere 
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 El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Domain: Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean
See Expert Guidance by Amaya, Dillon
Years of Record: 1999/12 to 2012/11
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 analysis, ecosystem status assessment, and...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: HDF-EOS
Timestep: Monthly,Weekly,Annual
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 1978/12 to 2019/04
The Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) is said to capture a more holistic representation of the atmospheric and oceanic anomalies that occur during ENSO events than do single-variables timeseries like the NinoSST indices. The MEIv2 is based on five variables from the tropical Pacific. These five...
Formats: ascii
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Pacific Ocean 
Years of Record: 2002/01 to 2018/02
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 vegetation indices are derived from...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: HDF-EOS
Timestep: Daily,Monthly,Weekly
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 1981/06 to 2015/11
Normalized Difference Vegetation Index-3rd generation (NDVI) using the Global Inventory Monitoring and Modeling System (GIMMS): Vegetation indices are radiometric measures of photosynthetically active radiation absorbed by chlorophyll in the green leaves of vegetation canopies and are...
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Daily
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 1981/05 to 2018/02
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 characteristics, the data are reprocessed to...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | GeoTIFF
Timestep: Daily
Domain: Global Years of Record: 1979/12 to 2014/11
The goal of the North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS) is to construct quality-controlled, and spatially and temporally consistent, land-surface model (LSM) datasets from the best available observations and model output to support modeling activities. Data sets are available on hourly...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | GRIB
Timestep: Climatology,Sub-daily,Monthly
Domain: North America Years of Record: 1869/12 to 2011/11
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 low daily minimum temperatures, the...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: ascii
Timestep: Daily
Domain: North America 
Years of Record: 1978/09 to 2021/08
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 input data is from two sources...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: ascii | csv | GeoTIFF | Image | shapefile
Timestep: Daily,Monthly
Domain: Antarctic, Arctic
See Expert Guidance by Meier, Walter
Years of Record: 1957/12 to 2012/11
"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 project is so called because it applies...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Daily,Monthly
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 1899/12 to 2015/11
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is defined by the leading pattern (EOF) of sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the North Pacific basin (typically, polewards of 20°N). The SST anomalies are obtained by removing both the climatological annual cycle and the global-mean SST anomaly...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: ascii
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Pacific Ocean
See Expert Guidance by Deser, Clara | See Expert Guidance by Trenberth, Kevin
The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) uses readily available temperature and precipitation data to estimate relative dryness. It is a standardized index that generally spans -10 (dry) to +10 (wet). Maps of operational agencies like NOAA typically show a range of -4 to +4, but more extreme values...
Formats: netCDF | ascii | binary
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Dai, Aiguo
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, sporadic, or isolated permafrost boundaries.
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: binary | shapefile
Timestep: Climatology
Domain: NH - Northern Hemisphere 
Years of Record: 1982/12 to 2020/09
The Precipitation Estimation from Remotely Sensed Information using Artificial Neural Networks- Climate Data Record (PERSIANN-CDR) provides daily rainfall estimates at a spatial resolution of 0.25 degrees in the latitude band 60S - 60N from 1983 to the near-present. The precipitation...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | binary
Timestep: Sub-daily,Daily
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Ashouri, Hamed | See Expert Guidance by Gehne, Maria
Years of Record: 1894/12 to 2019/07
PRISM is a set of monthly, yearly, and single-event gridded data products of mean temperature and precipitation, max/min temperatures, and dewpoints, primarily for the United States. In-situ point measurements are ingested into the PRISM (Parameter elevation Regression on Independent Slopes Model)...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ARC/INFO ASCII GRID
Timestep: Climatology,Daily,Monthly
Domain: North America
See Expert Guidance by Daly, Christopher
Years of Record: 1999/07 to 2009/09
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 backscatter measured by SeaWinds is dependent on...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | binary
Timestep: Daily,Monthly,Weekly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Ricciardulli, Lucrezia
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 deconstruct the various contributions...
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Climatology
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Pendergrass, Angeline
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. The RGI is produced as part of the...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: shapefile
Timestep: Climatology
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 1988/12 to 2012/11
"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 Bay, Alaska
Cape Kumukahi, Hawaii...
Formats: ascii
Timestep: Daily,Monthly Years of Record: 2002/05 to 2011/09
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: 1869/12 to 2021/06
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 as boundary conditions for models....
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Antarctic, Arctic, NH - Northern Hemisphere, SH - Southern Hemisphere Years of Record: 1978/09 to 2014/11
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: 1978/09 to 2014/11
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: 2002/05 to 2011/09
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 to help resolve ambiguity between low...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: HDF-EOS
Timestep: Daily
Domain: Antarctic, Arctic Years of Record: 1991/12 to 2008/03
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 2021/10
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: 1978/09 to 2009/09
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: 1978/09 to 2020/11
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
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. Reconstructions using numerous observational...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii | binary
Timestep: Daily,Monthly,Weekly,Irregular
Domain: Antarctic, Arctic
See Expert Guidance by Labe, Zachary
Years of Record: 1966/09 to 2020/09
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 data are available at weekly and...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Monthly,Weekly
Domain: North America
See Expert Guidance by Estilow, Thomas W. | See Expert Guidance by Robinson, David
Years of Record: 2002/05 to 2011/09
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 due to a problem with the rotation of...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: HDF-EOS
Timestep: Daily,Monthly,Weekly
Domain: NH - Northern Hemisphere 
Years of Record: 1969/12 to 2007/11
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 track) and gridded data.
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Climatology,Monthly,Annual
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 1849/12 to 2014/03
Sea surface temperature (SST) data sets are an essential resource for monitoring and understanding climate variability and climate change. By surface area, SSTs are the dominant (~71%) input into merged global land-ocean surface temperature data products. Historically, SST measurments...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Timestep: Climatology,Daily,Monthly,Weekly
Domain: Global Years of Record: 2002/05 to 2010/11
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 nighttime averages. Monthly versions are...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | binary
Timestep: Daily,Monthly,Weekly
Domain: Global Years of Record: 1980/12 to 2011/11
"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: 1890/12 to 2020/02
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, data up to 1941 were bias-adjusted...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: GRIB
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global Years of Record: 1869/12 to 2021/06
The Hadley Centre Global Sea Ice and Sea Surface Temperature (HadISST) is a combination of monthly globally complete fields of SST and sea ice concentration for 1871-present. This page focuses on the SST data; see the separate page for discussion of HadISST sea ice. HadISST uses reduced space...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global Years of Record: 1849/12 to 2017/11
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 data are from ICOADS release 2.5. Bias...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Kennedy, John
Years of Record: 1849/12 to 2018/11
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 uncertainties due to limited spatial...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Kennedy, John
Years of Record: 1853/12 to 2019/07
The NOAA Extended Reconstruction Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST) provides global, spatially complete SST data at a monthly timestep for 1854-present. Version5 is based upon statistical interpolation of the ICOADS release 3.0 data. Argo float data are used in the recent years (since ~2000). The data...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Climatology,Monthly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Hausfather, Zeke
Years of Record: 1853/12 to 2020/01
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 AVHRR SST data for 1985 onwards....
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Huang, Boyin | See Expert Guidance by Livermore, Jay | See Expert Guidance by Smith, Tom
Years of Record: 1981/10 to 2021/10
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 quality control, bias adjustment, and...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Huang, Boyin
Years of Record: 1981/08 to 2021/08
"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: 1981/11 to 2020/02
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: 1900/12 to 2014/02
The Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) is an extension of the widely used Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). The SPEI is designed to take into account both precipitation and potential evapotranspiration (PET) in determining drought. Thus, unlike the SPI, the SPEI...
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Monthly,Seasonal,Annual
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Vicente-Serrano, Sergio M.
Years of Record: 1948/12 to 2018/06
The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) is a widely used index to characterize meteorological drought on a range of timescales. On short timescales, the SPI is closely related to soil moisture, while at longer timescales, the SPI can be related to groundwater and reservoir storage. The SPI can...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Timestep: Monthly
See Expert Guidance by Keyantash, John
Years of Record: 1972/12 to 2014/11
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 Release 2.4 ship data and the...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Kent, Elizabeth
Years of Record: 1982/12 to 2013/11
"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 visible channels of the MVIRI and SEVIRI...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Sub-daily,Daily,Monthly
Domain: Africa, Europe, NH - Northern Hemisphere, SH - Southern Hemisphere Years of Record: 1982/12 to 2005/11
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: 1957/12 to 2018/11
TerraClimate is a global gridded dataset of meteorological and water balance variables for 1958-present, available on a monthly timestep. Its relatively fine spatial resolution, global extent, and long length are a unique combination that fills a void in climate data. TerraClimate combines...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Climatology,Monthly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Abatzoglou, John
Years of Record: 1799/12 to 2015/12
The global sea level record from tide gauges is an important indicator of the evolution and impact of global climate change. Tide gauge data also capture a variety of local and regional phenomena related to decadal climate variability, tides, storm surges, tsunamis, swells, and other coastal...
Timestep: Sub-daily,Daily,Monthly,Annual
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Hamlington, Benjamin | See Expert Guidance by Thompson, Phil
Years of Record: 1997/12 to 2019/11
The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) is a joint space mission between NASA and Japan's National Space Development Agency designed to monitor and study tropical and subtropical precipitation and the associated release of energy. The mission uses 5 instruments: Precipitation Radar (PR),...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | HDF
Timestep: Sub-daily,Daily,Monthly
Domain: Tropics
See Expert Guidance by Huffman, George J. | See Expert Guidance by Pendergrass, Angeline
Years of Record: 1909/12 to 2019/10
The U.S. Climate Extremes Index (CEI) was first presented in 1995 as a framework for quantifying observed changes in climate within the contiguous United States. At present, the CEI evaluates the percent area of extremes in the distribution of much above/below average (top/bottom 10% of...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: ascii
Timestep: Monthly,Seasonal,Annual
Domain: North America
See Expert Guidance by Gleason, Karin
Combines observed river discharge information with a climate-driven Water Balance Model in order to develop composite runoff fields that are consistent with observed discharges. This combination preserves the accuracy of discharge measurements as well as the spatial and temporal distribution of...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: ascii
Timestep: Climatology
Domain: Global Years of Record: 1869/12 to 2011/11
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 climatologies before the 1950s. The Walsh...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: ascii
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: NH - Northern Hemisphere, Arctic
See Expert Guidance by Chapman, William
Years of Record: 1949/12 to 2011/11
"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. WASWind has been constructed from wind...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Tokinaga, Hiroki
