While the Amazon rainforest area has a known effect on precipitation and global water vapour circulation, it is still poorly understood. This is in part due to the lack and inconsistency in atmospheric observations in the area.

This dataset holds the high resolution (0.5 x 0.5 deg; 8 vertical levels) monthly means of 5 atmospheric variables (air temperature, pressure, water vapour pressure, vertical velocity and horizontal wind speed) over the Amazon Basin for the period 1972 to 2009. This data is public and in particular, version 1.0 is citable (DOI: 10.5285/2dfce039-cd71-43b3-bed4-98978e78f1bb).