About this site
This site provides a simple interface to view climate observations from around the world. The site was originally designed with data for Australia, New Zealand and Central England. Those regions have daily temperature and precipitation datasets.
The rest of the world has temperature and precipitation values coming from monthly datasets (from GHCNm).
Other types of data come from various other sources, described below.
All data is from instrument-based recordings. There is no proxy data (for example, using tree rings or ice-cores to estimate temperature) nor modelled data on this website. The developers of the website are not sceptical of proxy-data or modelling but wanted to present the most simple and easily understandable climate science.
Source code and programming
The source code for this website is at the ClimateExplorer Github. There is an issues area where bugs can be raised and suggestions for improvements can be submitted.
The website is under active development; with:
- new features
- bugfixes
- updates to data
- new data sets
Data sources
Australian datasets
Australian Climate Observations Reference Network – Surface Air Temperature (ACORN-SAT)
The Australian Climate Observations Reference Network – Surface Air Temperature (ACORN-SAT) dataset includes ground-based temperature records for 112 stations in Australia. It is published by Australia's Bureau of Meteorology.
Other datasets
The Bureau of Meteorology make available four other datasets that ClimateExplorer makes use of. These are: precipitation, solar radiation, unadjusted minimum and maximum temperatures. These are downloaded for the sites listed in ACORN-SAT and combined into a unified representation of the 112 locations.
Copernicus
Copernicus is the Earth observation component of the European Union’s Space programme, looking at our planet and its environment
The Southern Hemisphere Ozone Hole area in ClimateExplorer is sourced from Copernicus.
The Global Carbon Project
The Global Carbon Project (GCP) integrates knowledge of greenhouse gases for human activities and the Earth system. Their projects include global budgets for three dominant greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide — and complementary efforts in urban, regional, cumulative, and negative emissions.
The GCP has been publishing estimates of global and national fossil CO₂ emissions since 2001. In the first instance these were simple re-publications of data from another source, but over subsequent years refinements have been made in response to feedback and identification of inaccuracies.
ClimateExplorer uses the CO₂ emissions dataset at zenodo.
Hadley Centre
Central England Temperature
The Hadley Centre Central England Temperature (HadCET) dataset is the longest instrumental record of temperature in the world.
Central England Precipitation
UK regional precipitation series (HadUKP) is a series of datasets of UK regional precipitation, which incorporates the long-running England & Wales Precipitation (EWP) series beginning in 1766, the longest instrumental series of this kind in the world.
ClimateExplorer uses HadCEP (Central England precipitation), with a daily series that began in 1931.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Global Historical Climatology Network
Global Historical Climatology Network monthly (GHCNm) provides monthly climate summaries from thousands of weather stations around the world. The initial version was developed in the early 1990s, and subsequent iterations were released in 1997, 2011, and most recently in 2018. The period of record for each summary varies by station, with the earliest observations dating to the 18th century. Some station records are purely historical and are no longer updated, but many others are still operational and provide short time delay updates that are useful for climate monitoring.
The current version (GHCNm v4) consists of mean monthly temperature data, as well as a beta release of monthly precipitation data. ClimateExplorer uses the mean monthly temperature and the monthly precipitation data.
Global Monitoring Laboratory
The Global Monitoring Laboratory (GML) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) conducts research that addresses three major challenges: greenhouse gas and carbon cycle feedbacks, changes in clouds, aerosols, and surface radiation, and recovery of stratospheric ozone.
The carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and Ozone Depleting Gas Index (ODGI) data in ClimateExplorer are sourced from GML.
Physical Sciences Laboratory
ClimateExplorer sources its Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) Index from NOAA/NCEI, based on the NOAA ERSSTV5, due to the source dataset (Kaplan SST) not being updated.
NOAAGlobalTemp
The NOAA Merged Land Ocean Global Surface Temperature Analysis (NOAAGlobalTemp, formerly known as MLOST) combines long-term sea surface (water) temperature (SST) and land surface (air) temperature datasets to create a complete, accurate depiction of global temperature trends. The dataset is used to support climate monitoring activities such as the Monthly Global Climate Assessment, and also provides input data for a number of climate models.
Satellite Applications and Research (STAR)
The Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry (LSA), part of STAR, specializes in the application of satellite altimetry to a broad array of climate and weather related issues, including global and regional sea level rise, coastal and open-ocean circulation, weather prediction and monitoring the changing state of the Arctic Ocean.
The global sea level time series estimates sea level rise based on measurements from satellite radar altimeters. Plots and time series are available for TOPEX/Poseidon (T/P), Jason-1, Jason-2, Jason-3, and Sentinel-6MF, which have monitored the same ground track since 1992, and for most of the altimeters that have operated since 1991, including T/P, Jason-1, Jason-2, Jason-3, ERS-2, GFO, Envisat, and Sentinel-3A/B.
ClimateExplorer uses the global sea level time series from LSA.
Total solar irradiance
The Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) Climate Data Record (CDR) measures the spectrally integrated energy input to the top of the Earth's atmosphere at a base mean distance from the Sun (i.e., one Astronomical Unit), and its units are Wm-2.
ClimateExplorer uses the satellite data of observed TSI, beginning 1978.
Royal Observatory of Belgium
Sunspot number
The Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB) maintains a sunspot dataset that goes back to 1818.
