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 2020/09
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: 1982/01 to 2013/12
"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: 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: 2006/01 to 2012/12
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: 1849/12 to 2020/12
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: 1879/12 to 2020/03
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 2020/02
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 2020/10
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 2019/07
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 2013/10
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: 2016/01 to 2016/12
GODAS is a real-time ocean analysis and a reanalysis. It is used for monitoring, retrospective analysis as well as for providing oceanic initial conditions for the CFS. Both temperature and synthetic salinity profiles are assimilated in a 3DVAR scheme. Beginning with March 2007, altimetry sea level...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | GRIB
Timestep: Monthly,Pentad
Domain: Global 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: 1849/12 to 2019/12
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 observations from both surface and...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Daily,Monthly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Atkinson, Chris
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: 1799/12 to 2016/09
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 beyond initial quality control. ICOADS...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii | binary | IMMA
Timestep: Climatology,Daily,Monthly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Deser, Clara
Years of Record: 1855/12 to 2020/03
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 for 1981 to present. Those desiring only...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Kaplan, Alexy
Years of Record: 1869/12 to 2020/08
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: 1869/12 to 2018/10
There are several indices used to monitor the tropical Pacific, all of which are based on SST anomalies averaged across a given region. Usually the anomalies are computed relative to a base period of 30 years. The Niño 3.4 index and the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) are the most...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Pacific Ocean, Tropics
See Expert Guidance by Trenberth, Kevin
Years of Record: 1958/01 to 2012/12
"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: 1900/01 to 2015/12
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
Years of Record: 1869/12 to 2010/12
The Simple Ocean Data Assimilation, or SODA, analysis is an ocean reanalysis data set consisting of gridded variables for the global ocean, as well as several derived fields. The goal is to provide an improved estimate of ocean state from those based solely on observations or numerical simulations.
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF
Timestep: Monthly
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 2005/01 to 2010/12
The Southern Ocean State Estimate (SOSE) is a model-generated best fit to Southern Ocean observations. As such, it provides a quantitatively useful climatology of the mean-state of the Southern Ocean. Technically, SOSE is a solution to the MITgcm. SOSE is a gridded dataset at 1/6...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: binary
Timestep: Daily,Monthly,Weekly,Annual
Domain: Antarctic, SH - Southern Hemisphere, Southern Ocean
See Expert Guidance by Mazloff, Matthew
Years of Record: 1849/12 to 2014/04
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: 2002/06 to 2010/12
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: 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: 1891/01 to 2020/03
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 2020/12
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 2017/12
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 2018/12
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 2019/08
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 2020/02
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 2021/04
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: 1981/09 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: 1973/01 to 2014/12
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: 1992/01 to 2013/04
The Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere program (TOGA) is a component of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) aimed specifically at the prediction of climate phenomena on time scales of months to years. In order to achieve the TOGA goals, a strategy of large-scale, long-term monitoring of the...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Sub-daily,Daily,Monthly,Weekly
Domain: Tropics 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 depth levels for annual, seasonal, and...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii
Timestep: Climatology,Monthly,Seasonal,Annual
Domain: Global 
Years of Record: 1955/01 to 2012/12
The World Ocean Atlas (WOA) is a set of climatological mean, gridded fields of oceanographic variables based on in-situ measurements from a wide variety of sources. Global, decadal averages of temperature, salinity, oxygen and nutrients are provided at monthly, seasonal and annual averaging...
Main variables and Earth System components:
Formats: netCDF | ascii | shapefile
Timestep: Climatology,Monthly,Seasonal
Domain: Global
See Expert Guidance by Mishonov, Alexey
