Data Distribution Centre

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AR4 Observations

Global mean temperature time series

The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report discusses four observational temperature datasets:

Dataset Information Global mean time seriesLiterature
CRUTEM3 Info Current data Archived data Brohan, P., J.J. Kennedy, I. Harris, S.F.B. Tett and P.D. Jones, 2006: Uncertainty estimates in regional and global observed temperature changes: a new dataset from 1850. J. Geophysical Research 111, D12106, doi:10.1029/2005JD006548
NCDC Info Archived data Smith, T. M., and R. W. Reynolds (2005), A global merged land air and sea surface temperature reconstruction based on historical observations (1880-1997), J. Climate, 18, 2021-2036. Summary of changes implemented up to 2011.
GISS Info Data Hansen, J.E., R. Ruedy, Mki. Sato, M. Imhoff, W. Lawrence, D. Easterling, T. Peterson, and T. Karl, 2001: A closer look at United States and global surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res., 106, 23947-23963, doi:10.1029/2001JD000354.
Lugina et al. Info Data K.M. Lugina, P.Ya. Groisman, K.Ya. Vinnikov, V.V. Koknaeva, and N.A. Speranskaya, 2006. Monthly surface air temperature time series area-averaged over the 30-degree latitudinal belts of the globe, 1881-2005. In Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A.

Gridded fields

High resolution gridded fields can also be obtained from the Data Distribution Centre. These data are provided by the Climate Research Unit (CRU), but, compared with the CRUTEM3 data used in the Fourth Assessment Report, different techniques for filling data were used and the resulting data is considered to be less reliable as far as long term temperature changes are concerned. These data are available here.