The IPCC Data Distribution Centre
Climate Baseline Data
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The IPCC Data Distribution CentreClimate Baseline Data |
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Undertaking a climate change impacts assessment not only requires climate and non-climatic scenarios for the future, but also good quality observed data describing present-day climate. Often the observed climate datasets required may be extensive (e.g. global coverage) or comprehensive (e.g. many climate variables). Data may be required as monthly means, as monthly time series, or as daily time series and the length of record would ideally be at least 30 years, perhaps longer. For certain GCM downscaling activities, daily upper air data will be needed.
The DDC cannot meet all the possible demands for observed climate data that impacts assessors may need. What we do provide are pointers to some existing climate datasets that are in the public domain, as well as providing access to a new gridded global land climate dataset that contains monthly surface climate variables for the period 1901-1995. This dataset - referred to as the CRU Global Climate Dataset - exists at a spatial resolution of 0.5º latitude by 0.5º longitude and contains estimates for all global land gridcells excluding Antarctica. This particular dataset can be viewed using the DDC Data Visualisation Pages and selected components of the dataset can be downloaded via ftp from the Data Download Pages. We use the CRU Global Climate Dataset to examine climate variability over the twentieth century and also to evaluate the simulations of the various GCMs over the period 1961-1990.
Links to Public-Domain Observed Climate Datasets
The inclusion of a dataset in these links implies no judgement about the validity or reliability of the data, nor does it imply that these datasets have been 'approved' by the IPCC. Users should make their own evaluation based on the available documentation and provenance of each dataset.
The CRU Global Climate Dataset
Global Historic Climatology Network (GHCN)
British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC)
Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC)
National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Data Support System
Climatic Research Unit (CRU) data
World Data Center - A. Meteorology