Surface Temperature
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Surface air temperature has profound and widespread impacts on both natural systems and on human lives and activities. It affects health, agriculture, energy demand and much more. Extremes of surface air temperature, both heat waves and extreme cold periods, are particular important for human health. Surface air temperature provides a key indicator of climate change, contributing to the “global surface temperature record”. A goal of limiting changes in global surface temperature provides the measure for the Paris climate agreement. |
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| Domain: | Atmosphere | |
| Subdomain: | Surface | |
| Scientific Area: | Energy and Temperature | |
| ECV Steward: | ||
| Products: | Air Temperature | |
Global Surface Air Temperature
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Figure: Estimates of average global surface temperature anomalies (degC with respect to the 1961–1990 mean) during the instrumental period (dots: median estimates; vertical bars: 95% uncertainty ranges) and decadally-smoothed values (graded shading from dark to light blue for values from the median to the outer 95% uncertainty) from HadCRUT4. Source: Tim Osborn (CRU, UEA) (Osborn, T.J., Jones, P.D. and Joshi, M., 2017: Recent United Kingdom and global temperature variations. Weather 72, 323-329, doi:10.1002/wea.3174., https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/~timo/diag/tempdiag.htm. Data source: HadCRUT4 data, Morice CP, Kennedy JJ, Rayner NA and Jones PD (2012) Quantifying uncertainties in global and regional temperature change using an ensemble of observational estimates: the HadCRUT4 dataset. Journal of Geophysical Research, 117, D08101, doi:10.1029/2011JD017187. |
ECV Products and Requirements
These products and requirements reflect the Implementation Plan 2022 (GCOS-244).
The requirements are found in the complete 2022 ECVs Requirements document as well: ECV Surface Temperature.
| Products | Air Temperature (near surface) | ||
| (*) | Unit | Values | |
| Horizontal Resolution | G | km | 10 |
| B | 100 | ||
| T | 500 | ||
| Vertical Resolution | G | - | |
| B | - | ||
| T | - | ||
| Temporal Resolution | G | h | < 1 |
| B | 1 | ||
| T | 3 | ||
| Timeliness | G | h | 6 |
| B | 24 | ||
| T | 720 | ||
| Required Measurement Uncertainty (2-sigma) | G | K | 0.1 |
| B | 0.5 | ||
| T | 1 | ||
| Stability | G | K/decade | 0.01 |
| B | 0.05 | ||
| T | 0.1 |
(*) Goal (G): an ideal requirement above which further improvements are not necessary. Breakthrough (B): an intermediate level between threshold and goal which, if achieved, would result in a significant improvement for the targeted application. The breakthrough value may also indicate the level at which specified uses within climate monitoring become possible. It may be appropriate to have different breakthrough values for different uses. Threshold (T): the minimum requirement to be met to ensure that data are useful
Data Sources
This list provides sources for openly accessible data sets with worldwide coverage for which metadata is available. It is curated by the respective GCOS ECV Steward(s). The list does not claim to be complete. Anyone with a suitable dataset who wishes it to be added to this list should contact the GCOS Secretariat.
Gridded In Situ:
- Climatic Research Unit (CRU) land surface air temperature data set (CRUTEM4)
- GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP)
- Gridded Temperature And Precipitation Climate Extremes Indices (Climdex Data)
- Gridded Night Marine Air Temperature (HadNMAT2) Global Temperature
- Hadley Centre Climatic Research Unit global historical surface temperature (HadCRUT4)
- Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) Global Temperature
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Global Temperature(NOAAGlobalTemp)
In Situ:
- Integrated Surface Database (ISD) of the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
- Global Historical Climatology Network Daily (GHCN-Daily) of the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
- Hadley Centre Integrated Surface Database (HadISD)
- International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS)
- International Surface Temperature Initiative (ISTI)
Reanalysis:
- REANALYSES.ORG (Inventory for Reanalysis)
