Blending a sea-surface temperature (SST) dataset with land air temperature makes an implicit assumption that SST anomalies are a good surrogate for marine air temperature anomalies. It has been shown that this is the case, and that marine SST measurements provide more useful data and smaller sampling errors than marine air temperature measurements would. So blending SST anomalies with land air temperature anomalies is a sensible choice.

This dataset contains monthly and seasonal blended sea-surface temperatures (MOHSST6) with land air temperature data from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (P.D. Jones).

Data are represented on 5 deg. grids from 1856 to May 2002.

The data were provided by the Met Office.