HadCRUT.5.0.0.0: Ensemble near-surface temperature anomaly grids and time series

HadCRUT5 (Met Office Hadley Centre/Climatic Research Unit global surface temperature anomalies, version 5) is a gridded dataset of global historical near-surface air temperature anomalies since the year 1850. It has been developed and maintained by the Met Office Hadley Centre and University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. Air temperature information over land is derived from CRUTEM5 monthly average meteorological station temperature series, an expanded compilation of station series with revised quality control methods. Temperatures over ocean are derived from the HadSST4 sea-surface temperature dataset, including revised assessments of instrumental biases. Temperature data are presented as monthly average near-surface temperature anomalies, relative to the 1961-1990 period, on a regular 5° latitude by 5° longitude grid from 1850 to 2018, with derived global and hemispheric time series. Two variants of the dataset are provided. The first represents temperature anomaly data on a grid for locations where measurement data are available. The second, more spatially complete, variant uses a Gaussian process based statistical method to make better use of the available observations, extending temperature anomaly estimates into regions for which the underlying measurements are informative. Each is provided as a 200‐member ensemble accompanied by additional uncertainty information. Monthly updates to HadCRUT5 are available from the Met Office Hadobs website (see documentation links).