This data archive is slowly being migrated to the Center for Science in the Earth System (CSES). A good way to find a data set on this and the CSES pages is to google "jisao keyword," where keyword could be SST, or the name of a particular data set.

The data archive consists of

• Gridded data sets: document spatial and temporal variability
• Key climate time series: North Atlantic Oscillation, northeast Brazil rainfall, etc.
• Links to WWW data sites: a good starting place for data sets that we don't provide
• Links to WWW sites which provide software to analyze data

Gridded Data Sets

The gridded data sets are written in network common data form (netCDF) conforming to the Cooperative Ocean-Atmosphere Research Data Service (COARDS) standard. (Description of COARDS netCDF standard.) A superset of the COARDS standard, called the NetCDF climate and forecast (CF) metadata convention, includes the possibility to store time series for multiple stations, along with their names and coordinates.

• MATLAB scripts for reading and writing data in netCDF.
• MATLAB scripts for reading FITS-format files.
• MATLAB distributed oceanographic data system (DODS) code for reading files at other institutions.
• MATLAB code for reading data written in hierarchical data format (HDF).
• NOAA ESRL provides both FORTRAN and IDL routines to read netCDF files.
• netCDF (command line) operators (NCOs) to manipulate netCDF and HDF files
• ASCII dumps of netCDF files (how to read them).
• GrADS command lines for reading a netCDF file.
  GrADS users:The older files were written with time specified as yyyymmddhhmmss (year, month, ...), and GrADS does not recognize this time convention. If you run into a file like this, please let me know, and I will update the time specification in the file

If you need the data in ASCII format, let me know and, time permitting, I will see what I can do.

Precipitation

Surface Temperature

Sea-Level Pressure (SLP)

Surface or 10-m Vector Wind & Surface Vector Stress

Miscellaneous

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Key Climate Time Series

Precipitation

Surface Temperature

Sea-Level Pressure (SLP)

Surface Wind

Miscellaneous

Useful Data Sites

Monthly-means

Indian Monsoon data: vegetation and precipitation departures served by the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA)

NOAA National Climatic Data Center

Selected fields from the Japan Meteorological Agency

"WaterWeb" search engine for hydrological data. Let me know if this is useful!

The British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC) provides global, gridded, historical data sets of sea surface temperatures, sea-level pressure, marine air temperature (nighttime) for academic use.

NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) provides several global, gridded data sets: surface temperature, precipitation, clouds, aerosols, and other fields.

The IRI/LDEO (International Research Institute for Climate Prediction / Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory) data library contains a broad selection of climate data sets.

Pacific Island Rainfall provided by the Oklahoma Climatological Survey.

University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit: historical, gridded, global precipitation, SLP, surface temperature, minimum-, maximum-temperature, vapor pressure, and many other fields.

Western Region Climate Center: digital values of climatological mean precipitation and surface temperature for the National Weather Service cooperative network stations in the western United States.

NCEP Climate Prediction Center:

• El Nino / Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and general atmospheric circulation indices
• reanalysis, precipitation, OLR fields

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory provides high spatial resolution sea surface temperatures and other, more oceanographic, fields.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research Informed Guide to Climate Data Sets.

NOAA Climate Diagnostics Center: the NMC Reanalysis data and the Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (COADS) in netCDF format. Also, water vapor temperature is available here.

Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center: historical data sets.

FSU Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies: near real-time monthly-mean pseudostress analyses for the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Global River Discharge Database Project (RivDIS)
Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC) river discharge data.

United Kingdom Met Office Hadley Centre

Pentad-means

• NOAA National Centers for Environmental Prediction: reanalysis, precipitation, OLR fields

Daily- or hourly-means

• Indian Monsoon data: meteorological fields and precipitation served by the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA)
• Pacific Island Rainfall provided by the Oklahoma Climatological Survey (PACRAIN).
• PMEL TAO Project hourly and daily data from moorings in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.
• National Climatic Data Center: daily, hourly, and 15-minute averages. mostly U.S., but some global.
• NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory provides high spatial resolution sea surface temperatures and other, more oceanographic, fields.
• Western Region Climate Center: digital values of climatological mean precipitation and surface temperature for the National Weather Service cooperative network stations in the western United States.

Other sites

• Annual whaling statistics for 1910 - present
• United Nations Global Resource Information Database (GRID) various environmental data bases (soil moisture retention, for example).

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Software for Analyzing Data

Please send me URLs for sites with useful free software for analyzing data.

• "Matlab Tools for Oceanographic Analysis" is a large collection of specialized routines.
• "Pyclimate" performs SVD, EOFs, filtering, ... using the Python programming language.
• NetCDF operators (NCOs) manipulate netCDF and HDF format files. NCO home page | JISAO Cookbook.
• NOAA ESRL documents how to read netCDF files in many different software packages
• NCAR Command Language (NCL) operates on netCDF, HDF, and GRIB format files, and makes figures.
• Climate Data Operators (CDO) manipulate netCDF, GRIB, EXTRA, SERVICE, and IEG format files.

*Contact: Todd Mitchell | 206-685-3786 | mitchell@atmos.washington.edu