NCDC Experimental Land & Ocean Data description

Experimental Land and Ocean data set.

NCDC's Experimental Land & Ocean gridded data set is a combination of land surface gridded temperature data from the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) and gridded sea surface temperature data from the Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (COADS).

The Land & Ocean Dataset is formed by merging COADS SST anomalies with GHCN land-surface temperature anomalies. All anomalies are with respect to the 1961-1990 base period. The SST anomalies are formed from quality-controlled COADS SST observations by averaging anomalies within the given month and 5-degree latitude-longitude square.

For squares where only a SST or GHCN anomaly is defined, that anomaly is the temperature anomaly for the square as defined by the SST or GHCN dataset.

For squares where both land and ocean data are present, the two anomalies are merged by summing the two, with the SST weighted by the fraction of ocean and the GHCN weighted by the fraction of land for the square.

Information on the GHCN temperature data is available at
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ghcn/ghcn.html

Information on the COADS temperature data is available at
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/coads/

To Main Page