The various datasets on the CRU website are provided for all to use, provided the source is acknowledged.
Acknowledgement should usually be made by citing one or more of the papers referenced on the appropriate page. Some datasets are also disseminated via disciplinary data repositories (if indicated on the individual data page), which can provide persistent links to a particular dataset. This website can also be cited if deemed appropriate, though note that the URLs may sometimes be changed.
Datasets are managed by a variety of people and projects within CRU. We endeavour to update the majority of the data pages at timely intervals although this cannot be guaranteed by specific dates.
Instrumental climate data
- Temperature (CRUTEM4, HadCRUT4: 1850-present global data on a 5° x 5° grid)
○ Main webpage for the temperature datasets
○ HadCRUT4 global temperatures for the current year
○ CRUTEM4 land temperature data via Google Earth
○ Archive of older CRUTEM4 versions
- High-resolution gridded datasets (CRU TS, CRU CY, CRU CL: 1901-2016 global land data for multiple variables on a 0.5° x 0.5° or finer grid)
○ Main webpage for the high-resolution gridded datasets (now updated with CRU TS v4.05, 1901-2020)
○ CRU TS land temperature, precipitation, diurnal range and vapour pressure via Google Earth
- Precipitation and drought
○ scPDSI drought indices for Global land, Europe and Alps (Global land now updated to 2020)
○ Precipitation (Hulme dataset: global land data on 5°x5° and 2.5°x3.75° grids for 1900-1998)
- Pressure and Circulation Indices
○ Pressure data, NAO, SOI and other circulation indices, etc. (MOI updated to 2020, Apr 2021)
○ See also UK Climate Indices for Lamb Weather Types
- Climate data for individual locations, countries and regions
○ Long monthly temperature series for Scotland and Ireland
○ Long monthly rainfall total series for the UK and Ireland
○ UK Climate Indices
○ Alpine climate data
○ Japan
○ Greenland
○ Falklands
Palaeoclimate data
Reanalysis climate data
- Daily and 6-hourly NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis data, for a Eurasian window (ASCII) - Apr 2021: updated with 2020 data
Climate model data and future climate projections
- Future daily/hourly UK climate projections using UKCP09 weather generator
- Future monthly climate projections using pattern-scaling methods from ClimGen
- IPCC Data Distribution Centre (external site for future climate projections, originally set up by CRU & DKRZ)
- Simulations of the last 500 to 1000 years from the SO&P project
Data associated with specific papers
You may also want to look at:
- KNMI Climate Explorer, where you can download & analyse many CRU datasets.
- WMO archive of global weather and climate extremes, an official archive of extremes.
Help and support
Files ending in ".gz" can be decompressed using gzip (most platforms) or jZip (Windows).
We can provide only limited support to dataset users, though we will try to respond. Do tell us if you spot problems that need fixing.
License
Unless otherwise stated on their pages, these datasets are made available under the Open Database License. Any rights in individual contents of the datasets are licensed under the Database Contents License under the conditions of Attribution and Share-Alike. Please use the attribution Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia.