Global Monthly Climatology for the Twentieth Century (New et al.)

The data set is gridded at 0.5 degree latitude/longitude resolution and includes seven variables: precipitation, mean temperature, diurnal temperature range, wet-day frequency, vapour pressure, cloud cover, and ground-frost frequency. All variables have mean monthly values for the period 1901-1995, several have data as recent as 1998, and more data will be added by the data originators.

In constructing the monthly grids the authors used an anomaly approach which attempts to maximize station data in space and time (New et al., 2000). In this technique, grids of monthly historic anomalies are derived relative to a standard normal period. Station measurement data for the years 1961-1990, extracted from the monthly data holdings of the Climatic Research Unit and the Global Historic Climatology Network (GHCN), served as the normal period (New et al., 1999).