Land surface climate station records

HadCRUT3 is one of the global temperature records that have underpinned Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports and numerous scientific studies. The data subset consists of a network of individual land stations that has been designated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) for use in climate monitoring and other data that the Met Office has gained permission from the owners to make available. The data contain monthly average temperature values for more than 3,000 land stations.

Station files

The latest available data subset is HadCRUT3 subset July 2011 release.Station record files, as released July 2011

The previous versions of the station records are also available:

• HadCRUT3 subset December 2009 release. Station record files, as released in December 2009
• HadCRUT3 subset January 2010 release. Station record files, as released in January 2010

The stations that we have released are all those in the Met Office Hadley Centre and University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit gridded land surface temperature database (CRUTEM3) except 19 stations from Poland for which the national meteorological service which owns the underlying station data has not given permission to release.

These station records were produced by the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia in collaboration with the Met Office Hadley Centre.

Climate station file data format

The climate station data files are in the following format:

Number= 037760
Name= LONDON/GATWICK
Country= UNITED KINGDO
Lat= 51.2
Long= 0.2
Height= 59
Start year= 1961
End year= 2007
First Good year= 1961
Source ID= 10
Source file= Jones+Anders
Jones data to= 1998
Normals source= Data
Normals source start year= 1961
Normals source end year= 1990
Normals= 3.8 3.9 5.8 8.0 11.3 14.4 16.5 16.2 13.8 10.8 6.6 4.7 
Standard deviations source= Data
Standard deviations source start year= 1961
Standard deviations source end year= 1990
Standard deviations= 2.1 2.0 1.3 0.9 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.2 1.0 1.2 1.1 1.7 
Obs:
1961 3.9 7.1 7.5 10.3 11.0 14.7 15.9 16.1 15.7 10.9 6.4 2.7 
1962 4.1 4.5 2.5 7.6 9.8 13.0 15.1 14.7 12.6 10.5 5.9 1.7 
1963 -2.7 -0.8 6.2 8.6 10.3 14.7 15.1 14.5 13.1 10.3 8.5 2.0 

Notes:

• Number is a station identifier (usually the number assigned by the WMO).
• Long is the longitude of the station. Negative values are east. 
• Height is in metres.
• First Good Year - data before that year are suspect.
• Source ID is an indicator of the source of the data.
• Source File and Jones data to are internal flags relating this file to other systems.
• Normals and standard deviations are produced and used as described in the data set papers. One value for each calendar month (Jan-Dec) in Celsius.
• Obs (short for Observations) are monthly average temperatures, in Celsius - one row for each year. Each column is a calendar month (Jan-Dec).
• A value of -99 indicates missing data.

Code to make gridded fields and global time-series

The main use of these station records is to make gridded fields of temperature anomalies, and time-series of large-scale temperature change. To assist users in making these for themselves, we are providing two Perl programs:

• station_gridder.perl takes the station data files and makes gridded fields in the same way as used in CRUTEM3. The gridded fields are output in theASCII format used for distributing CRUTEM3.
• make_global_average_ts_ascii.perl takes the output of the gridded and makes a global average annual temperature anomaly time series, again in the same way as those distributed with CRUTEM3.

This code is provided to enable users to make gridded fields and calculate a global average annual temperature anomaly time series from the station data provided here. Release of this code does not necessarily confer any particular status on any results obtained using it and is provided at users own risk. The official peer-reviewed CRUTEM3 and HadCRUT3 data sets continue to reside on the Met Office Hadley Centre Observations website (HadObs). This code is released under an Open Source licence that is contained as comments in the code. By running the code you indicate your acceptance of the licence.

Questions and answers about the data sets

Answers to some questions about the data sets and how to use them are available from the Land surface climate station records - frequently asked questions.

Acknowledgements

The Met Office would like to thank the following countries' national meteorological services for kindly agreeing to the release of some or all of their climate data used in constructing the HadCRUT3 data set. Users of the data are required to abide by any additional conditions for re-use of the data requested from the national met. services as specified below.