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Dataset

 

GloSATLAT.1.0.0.0: An observational record of global surface air temperature change over land from 1781

Latest Data Update: 2025-04-16
Status: Completed
Online Status: ONLINE
Publication State: Citable
Publication Date: 2025-05-07
DOI Publication Date: 2025-06-19
Download Stats: last 12 months
Dataset Size: 11.89K Files | 703MB

Abstract

GloSATLAT is a global gridded data set of surface air temperature change over land since 1781. Data are provided as air temperature anomalies relative to 1961-1990 average conditions on a 5-degree latitude by 5-degree longitude grid. Time series of average temperature changes and their uncertainties are available for the globe and for a selection of regions.

The gridded data set is constructed using meteorological station temperature series from the GloSATLAT station database (GloSATLAT sdb). This is an extended version of the CRUTEM5 station database. The station series include bias adjustments for non-standard thermometer enclosures in the early instrumental period, prior to the use of standard instrumental shelters (Wallis et al., 2024). New climatological normal estimates are included for stations with limited data in the 1961–1990 baseline period, estimated using the Local Expectation Kriging method (Taylor et al., 2025), allowing a larger number of station series to contribute to the gridded data set.

GloSATLAT uses the HadCRUT5 data processing system to produce the gridded data set, time series and uncertainty estimates.

Sources of additional information:
The following papers are provided in the related documents section with further information about GloSATLAT and its underpinning data.

Gridded dataset description:
Morice, C. P., et al. (2025). An observational record of global gridded near surface air temperature change over land and ocean from 1781, Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-500.

Land station data processing:
Taylor, M. et al. (2025, in review). GloSAT LATsdb: a global compilation of land air temperature station records with updated climatological normals from local expectation kriging. Submitted to Geoscience Data Journal.
Wallis, E. J., et al. (2024). Quantifying exposure biases in early instrumental land surface air temperature observations. International Journal of Climatology, 44(5), 1611–1635. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.8401

Citable as:  Morice, C.P.; Berry, D.I.; Cornes, R.C.; Cowtan, K.; Cropper, T.; Hawkins, E.; Kennedy, J.J.; Osborn, T.; Rayner, N.A.; Rivas, B.R.; Schurer, A.; Taylor, M.; Teleti, P.R.; Wallis, E.J.; Winn, J.P.; Kent, E.C. (2025): GloSATLAT.1.0.0.0: An observational record of global surface air temperature change over land from 1781. NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis, 19 June 2025. doi:10.5285/ef237f578329487eb02fb42f9db56bb2. https://dx.doi.org/10.5285/ef237f578329487eb02fb42f9db56bb2
Abbreviation: Not defined
Keywords: GloSATLAT, air temperature, land surface temperature

Details

Previous Info:
No news update for this record
Previously used record identifiers:
No related previous identifiers.
Access rules:
Public data: access to these data is available to both registered and non-registered users.
Use of these data is covered by the following licence(s):
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
When using these data you must cite them correctly using the citation given on the CEDA Data Catalogue record.
Data lineage:

Land air temperature station data is sourced from GloSATLAT station data base (GloSATLAT sdb). This is an extended version of the CRUTEM5 station database. It adds bias adjustments for non-standard thermometer enclosures in the early instrumental periods and includes new climatological normal estimates for stations with limited data in the 1961–1990 baseline period.

Data Quality:
Data are quality controlled, assessed for biases and provided with uncertainty information. See documentation for details.
File Format:
NetCDF

Process overview

This dataset was generated by the computation detailed below.
Title

HadCRUT5 data processing deployed on Met Office computers

Abstract

HadCRUT5 has been processed on Met Office computing facilities, using HadSST4 and CRUTEM5 inputs.

CRUTEM5 station data are gridded onto a regular latitude-longitude grid using the HadCRUT4 ensemble method. Resulting land air temperature anomaly grids are merged with sea-surface temperature anomalies from the HadSST4 dataset though weighted averaging based on grid cell areal land fractions to produce the non-infilled HadCRUT5 grids.

HadCRUT5 analysis grids are computed using a Gaussian process based statistical method to provide improved estimates of surface temperature anomaly fields, extending the data coverage into regions for which the available observations are informative. Analysis uncertainties are presented through an ensemble method. The Gaussian process based method is applied separately for land and marine temperature grids. Global grids are produced using a land-sea area fraction based weighting, in which sea ice regions (as defined by HadISST2 sea-ice concentrations) are treated as land.

Regional time series are derived as grid box area weighted averages, with accompanying uncertainties. Global time series are defined as the average of northern and southern hemisphere series. Remaining uncertainty from unrepresented regions is estimated from sub-sampling experiments using the ERA5 reanalysis.

Input Description

None

Output Description

None

Software Reference

None

No variables found.