CRU CY 4.02: Climatic Research Unit (CRU) year-by-year variation of selected climate variables by country (CY) version 4.02 (Jan. 1901 - Dec. 2017)

The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) Country (CY) data version 4.02 dataset consists of ten climate variables for country averages at a monthly, seasonal and annual frequency; including cloud cover, diurnal temperature range, frost day frequency, precipitation, daily mean temperature, monthly average daily maximum and minimum temperature, vapour pressure and potential evapotranspiration. This version uses the updated set of country definitions, please see the appropriate Release Notes.

This dataset was produced in 2018 by CRU at the University of East Anglia and extends the CRU CY4.01 data to include 2017. CRU CY4.02 is a full release, differing only in methodology from the existing current version 3 release, v3.26. Both are released concurrently to support comparative evaluations between these two versions, however, this will be the last release of version 3. The data are available as text files with the extension '.per' and can be opened by most text editors.

Spatial averages are calculated using area-weighted means. CRU CY4.02 is derived directly from the CRU TS4.02 dataset. CRU CY version 4.02 spans the period 1901-2017 for 289 countries.

To understand the CRU CY4.02 dataset, it is important to understand the construction and limitations of the underlying dataset, CRU TS4.02. It is therefore recommended that all users read the Harris et al, 2014 paper and the CRU TS4.02 release notes listed in the online documentation on this record.

CRU CY data are available for download to all CEDA users.