HadISDH land: gridded global monthly land surface humidity data version 4.4.0.2021f

HadISDH.land.4.4.0.2021f (Met Office Hadley Centre Integrated Surface Dataset of Humidity) is a near-global gridded monthly mean land surface humidity climate monitoring product created from in situ observations of air temperature and dew point temperature from weather stations. The dataset begins in January 1973. The observations have been quality controlled and homogenised. Uncertainty estimates for observation issues and gridbox sampling are provided.

The data are monthly gridded (5 degree by 5 degree) fields. Products are available for temperature and six humidity variables: specific humidity (q), relative humidity (RH), dew point temperature (Td), wet bulb temperature (Tw), vapour pressure (e), dew point depression (DPD).

This version extends the 4.3.1.2020f version to the end of 2021 and constitutes a minor update to HadISDH due to changing the climatology period from 1981-2010 to 1991-2020. All other processing steps for HadISDH remain identical. Users are advised to read the update document in the Docs section for full details.

As in previous years, the annual scrape of NOAA's Integrated Surface Dataset for HadISD.3.2.0.2021f, which is the basis of HadISDH.land, has pulled through some historical changes to stations. This, and the additional year of data, results in small changes to station selection. The homogeneity adjustments differ slightly due to sensitivity to the addition and loss of stations, historical changes to stations previously included and the additional 12 months of data.

To keep informed about updates, news and announcements follow the HadOBS team on twitter @metofficeHadOBS.

For more detailed information e.g bug fixes, routine updates and other exploratory analysis, see the HadISDH blog: http://hadisdh.blogspot.co.uk/

References:

When using the dataset in a paper please cite the following papers (see Docs for link to the publications) and this dataset (using the "citable as" reference):

Willett, K. M., Dunn, R. J. H., Thorne, P. W., Bell, S., de Podesta, M., Parker, D. E., Jones, P. D., and Williams Jr., C. N.: HadISDH land surface multi-variable humidity and temperature record for climate monitoring, Clim. Past, 10, 1983-2006, doi:10.5194/cp-10-1983-2014, 2014.

Dunn, R. J. H., et al. 2016: Expanding HadISD: quality-controlled, sub-daily station data from 1931, Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems, 5, 473-491.

Smith, A., N. Lott, and R. Vose, 2011: The Integrated Surface Database: Recent Developments and Partnerships. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 92, 704-708, doi:10.1175/2011BAMS3015.1

We strongly recommend that you read these papers before making use of the data, more detail on the dataset can be found in an earlier publication:

Willett, K. M., Williams Jr., C. N., Dunn, R. J. H., Thorne, P. W., Bell, S., de Podesta, M., Jones, P. D., and Parker D. E., 2013: HadISDH: An updated land surface specific humidity product for climate monitoring. Climate of the Past, 9, 657-677, doi:10.5194/cp-9-657-2013.