Data Sets of Monthly Mean Surface Air Temperature

The data sets of monthly mean surface air temperature (SAT) contain data from land stations. Several databases are consolidated. Historically, European countries have maintained good station coverage, providing the longest records of air temperature and pressure (see thumbnail). Meteorological observations over land regions of Russia and Alaska also have reasonable station coverage and length. A few long time records are also available from the Northwest Territories of Canada. All the land station data have been assessed for homogeneity using interstation comparison (see discussion of homogeneity assessment techniques in Jones et al. (1999)). Monthly data have also been assessed for errors by identifying peaks exceeding 3 standard deviations and then checking them with nearby station records. The WMO name of the station is used for the name of the file containing SAT station data. The file stn_list_sat contains information about each station such as the WMO number and name of the station, its latitude, longitude and elevation and years for which data are available. Data compiled by Igor Polyakov.