Hadley Centre SST data set (HadSST2)

The Met Office Hadley Centre's sea surface temperature data set, HadSST2 is a monthly global field of SST on a 5° latitude by 5° longitude grid from 1850 to date. The data are neither interpolated nor variance adjusted.

The SST data are taken from the International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set, ICOADS, from 1850 to 1997 and from the NCEP-GTS from 1998 to the present. HadSST2 is produced by taking in-situ measurements of SST from ships and buoys, rejecting measurements which fail quality checks, converting the measurements to anomalies by subtracting climatological values from the measurements, and calculating a robust average of the resulting anomalies on a 5° by 5° degree monthly grid. After gridding the anomalies, bias corrections are applied to remove spurious trends caused by changes in SST measuring practices before 1942. The uncertainties due to under-sampling have been calculated for the gridded monthly data, as have the uncertainties on the bias corrections following the procedures described in the paper (Rayner et al., 2006).

The material may be downloaded to file or printer for the purposes of private study and scientific research. Any other proposed use of the material is subject to a copyright license available from the Met Office. Please read their terms and conditions.

Reference:
Rayner, N.A., P.Brohan, D.E.Parker, C.K.Folland, J.J.Kennedy, M.Vanicek, T.Ansell and S.F.B.Tett 2006: Improved analyses of changes and uncertainties in sea surface temperature measured in situ since the mid-nineteenth century: the HadSST2 data set. Journal of Climate. 19(3) pp. 446-469

Variables
SST anomalies wrt 1961-90 climatology (degC)
SST monthly climatology 1961-1990 (degC)
Measurement and sampling error, 1 standard error (degC)
2.5 percent bias bound, equivalent to 2 standard errors (degC)
97.5 percent bias bound, equivalent to 2 standard errors (degC)
ZonalGlobal by 5 deg
MeridionalGlobal by 5 deg
VerticalSea Surface  
Temporal Jan 1850 to Jun 2014 by 1 month(s)
Jan 1961 to Dec 1990 Climatology by 1 month(s)
Static? yes
Volume 98MB
Serverpublic:
Sourcehttp://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadsst2/
Acquired Mar 29, 2011 (Updated Jan 2015)
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