Climate Data Sources

On this page we maintain a list of sources of climate data that are available on the web. Feel free to inform the author about other sites that provide useful climate data.

The following web sites are interesting:

• IRI/LDEO Climate Data Library
• Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Implementation (PCMDI)
• Deutsche Klimarechenzentrum (DKRZ)
• Climate Data at Florida State University
• Climate Data at the NCEP Climate Prediction Center
• The Data Distribution Centre of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
• Data available from the Climate Research Unit.

Climate Data from the ECMWF

The climate data distributed by the ECMWF is available to all members of the CKO. For further information you should contact Seijo Kruizinga or Ton Donker of the "Licensie Bureau KNMI". Note that this is the only way in which you can obtain access to the data distributed the ECMWF.

Climate Data on CD-ROM

The following is an alphabetic list of the CD-ROMs available.

Atlas of Surface Marine Data 1994

These three CD-ROMs contain raw and objectively analyzed fields of surface marine anomalies of fluxes of heat, momentum, and fresh water along with other parameters of interest. These revised monthly mean fields are derived from individual observations in the Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (COADS Release 1 and an interim release) from January 1945 to December 1989 and are analyzed on a 1-degree by 1-degree global grid. Corrections have been made to reduce wind speed bias associated with an erroneous Beaufort equivalent scale, to quality control night-time fractional cloud cover observations according to the brightness of the sky, to consider weather-associated "sky obscured" cloudiness observations as valid observations of 100% cloud cover, and to correct for erroneously missing "clear" present weather observations after 1981.

ECMWF Re-Analysis Sample Data 1979-1993

These CD-ROMs contain selected fields for the period 1979 through 1993. The following fields are included:

• Geopotential on levels 1000 and 500 hPa (z),
• Temperature on 850 and 200 hPa (t),
• U- and V-Windcopmonents on 850 and 200 hPa (u,v),
• U10- and V10-Windcomponents at 10 m height (u,v),
• Evaporation (e),
• Total precipitation (large scale plus convective) (tp),
• Total cloud cover (tcc),
• Two meter temperature (t2),
• Two meter dew point temperature (d2).

ECMWF Seasonal Ensemble Simulations

These four CD-ROMs contain seasonal ensemble forecasts from a comprehensive numerical model and have been written for scientists world wide to get experience in using ensemble forecast data and to develop probabilistic seasonal forecast tools relevant to particular regions of interest. The CD-ROMs contain selected fields for the Winter season DJFM, Spring MAMJ, Summer JJAS and Autums SOND of the period 1979 through 1993. The following 10 day mean fields are included:

• Geopotential on levels 700, 500 and 200 hPa (z),
• Temperature on 850, 500 and 200 hPa (t),
• U- and V-Windcomponents on 850 and 200 hPa (u,v)
• Vertical velocity on 500 hPa (w),
• Soil-moisture content in the first layer (7cm depth) of the soil model used (swl1),
• Snow depth (sd),
• Precipitation (large scale plus convective) (tp),
• Surface sensible heatflux (sshf),
• Surface latent heatflux (slhf),
• Mean sea level pressure (msl),
• Total cloud cover (tcc),
• Surface solar radiation (ssr),
• Surface thermal radiation (str),
• Top thermal radiation (ttr),
• Surface windstress components (ewss, nsss),
• Minimum temperature at 2m (mn2t),
• Maximum temperature at 2m (mx2t),
• Surface temperature (stl1, Member 10 (reanalysis) only),
• Land-sea mask (lsm, 1 file only).

The CDs also contain visualization and analysis software for both MS-DOS and UNIX platforms.

JPL Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center Personal Computer Software CD-ROM

Global Ocean Surface Temperatur Atlas Plus (GOSTAplus)

This CD-ROM contains Global Ocean Surface Temperature Atlas 7 (GOSTA 7), GOSTA 8, Global sea-ice and Sea Surface Temperature Version 2.2 (GISST2.2), and Blended Sea Surface Temperature and Land Surface Air Temperature Anomaly Data.

Global Warming Projection with the MRI-CGCM, Vol. 2+4

The Kobe Collection, 1998 edition

Historical marine meteorological observations by voluntary observing ships recruited by the Japan Meteorological Agency.

Marine Climate Atlas of the World, Version 1.0, March 1992

This CD-ROM includes analysis and display software for climatological averages of atmospheric and oceanographic data. The data are summarized with user-defined 1 and 5 degree grid areas covering the global marine environement. The summaries are produced using predominantly ship data collected between 1854-1969. The major elements include air and sea temperature, dewpoint temperature, scalar wind speed, sea-level pressure, wave height, wind and ocean-current roses.

Netherlands Indian Ocean Programme 1990-1995

This CD-ROM contains information on the research themes, scientist involved and instruments used and most of the basic scientific data gathered during the executaion phase of the Netherlands Indian Ocean Programme from May 1992 till February 1993. The main part of this disk consists of CTD measurement data files collected in the North-western Indian Ocean.

NOAA Marine Environmetal Buoy Database

North Atlantic-European Pressure Observations 1868-1995 (WASA dataset version 1.0)

World Climate Research Programme Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere, Version 1.0

A set of 6 CD-ROMs for the years 1985 through 1990.

World Ocean Atlas 1994

WOCE Global Data Version 1.0 1998

WOCE Mean Surface Wind Fields Version 2.0 July 2000

Surface winds were measured by three satellite microwave scatterometers: ESA's AMI aboard ERS-1 and ERS-2, and NASA's NSCAT aboard ADEOS-1. Weekly and monthly fields were objectively analysed from the raw measurements, and seasonal and annual averages were computed. This CD-ROM provides wind speed and components, wind stress and components, wind velocity and wind stress curl, analysed on global 1 degree grids from August 1991 to May 2000.

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