Documentation
This page contains the documentation for the CRU TS 1.1 data-set, and comprises:
Ownership
This data-set is owned by its author, Mark New. It is being distributed, where necessary, by Tim Mitchell.
WARNING!
This data-set is now obsolete. It has been superseded by the updated version, called CRU TS 2.0, which should generally be used instead. This earlier version is only maintained in order to provide backwards compatibility.
Data
The CRU TS 1.1 data-set is available by ftp. Contact me for access.
Full range of data-sets
If you have arrived at this page from a different website (without the red frame), you may be interested in the wider range of high-resolution climate grids available here. There is a table detailing the full range of data-sets.).
8th October 2003
Data-set supply transferred from David Viner to Tim Mitchell. The only means of supply is now via ftp.
Introduction
This data-set represents an incremental update to CRU TS 1.0, prior to the major update (CRU TS 2.0).
The CRU TS 1.1 data-set comprises 36 monthly grids of observed climate, for the period 1996-1998, and covering the global land surface at 0.5 degree resolution. There are two climatic variables available: precipitation, temperature.
Guidance
This data-set was constructed by Mark New. Users should refer to the published literature for details of it. However, much of the information supplied with the subsequent version (CRU TS 2.0) is relevant. In particular, the issues involved in using CRU TS 2.0 for time-series analysis are addressed more explicitly and fully. We recommend that all users who intend to examine climate change using this data-set should consider the issues carefully before beginning their work.
Data Structure
Ownership
New, M., Hulme, M. and Jones, P.D., 2000: Representing twentieth century space-time climate variability. Part 2: development of 1901-96 monthly grids of terrestrial surface climate. Journal of Climate 13, 2217-2238 (abstract)
Disclaimer
Further Information
The data-set is only available in the form of a set of ASCII files, one per year and climate variable. The directory and file locations are given in a text file. The file format and a short snippet of fortran 90 code is given in the original readme file.
The creator of this data
set (Dr. Mark New) retains full ownership rights over it. The data set may
be freely used for non-commerical scientific and educational purposes, provided
it is described as CRU TS 1.1 and cited as an update to:
The author of this data-set cannot bear any responsibility for the consequences of using it, which are entirely the responsibility of the user. It is inevitable that a data-set of this size will contain some errors and inconsistencies. However, these have been kept to a minimum and when they are identified they are corrected when resources permit. Updates to this data-set will be notified on this web page and by email to registered users.