DATA DESCRIPTIONS for Thompson et al. 2010 An abrupt drop in Northern Hemisphere sea-surface temperature around 1970 Files with .nc suffix are NetCDF files. NetCDF is a machine-independent data format: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/ Most files are gzipped (.gz suffix) ICOADS2.4, COBE and KAPLAN data sourced via: http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/SatelliteData/ghrsst/intercomp_data.html Data downloaded on 25th May 2010 16:40 BST from http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/SatelliteData/ghrsst/intercomp_data.html Gridded data (from intermparison website) 18500101-NODC-L2_GHRSST-SSTblend-GLOB_ICOADS-Monthly_FiveDeg_DayNitAvg_18500101_20080630-v01.7-fv01.0.nc 18500101-NODC-L4_GHRSST-SSTblend-GLOB_COBE-Monthly_FiveDeg_DayNitAvg_18500101_20080630-v01.7-fv01.0.nc 18500101-NODC-L4_GHRSST-SSTblend-GLOB_Kaplan-Monthly_FiveDeg_DayNitAvg_18500101_20080630-v01.7-fv01.0.nc Long term means (from intermparison website) COBE-Monthly_FiveDeg_DayNitAvg_clim.nc ICOADS-Monthly_FiveDeg_DayNitAvg_clim.nc Kaplan-Monthly_FiveDeg_DayNitAvg_clim.nc Time series (global, northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere) (from intercomparison website) COBE-Monthly_FiveDeg_DayNitAvg-ts_anoms.nc ICOADS-Monthly_FiveDeg_DayNitAvg-ts_anoms.nc Kaplan-Monthly_FiveDeg_DayNitAvg-ts_anoms.nc Time series of N-S difference extracted by JJK from the hemispheric time series files to text file Format is YEAR,MONTH,N-S difference (missing data labelled as -NaN): cobe_n_s.txt icoads2.4_n_s.txt kaplan_n_s.txt ICOADS2.5 data sourced via:http://icoads.noaa.gov/data.icoads.html ICOADS data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their Web site at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/ Data downloaded on 12th March 2010 20:13 BST from http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.coads.2deg.html click on link sst.*.nc under "Download File" in the table, then sst.mean.nc in the table entitled ICOADS 2-degree Standard ICOADS_2.5.nc (original file name sst.mean.nc) Data downloaded on 12th March 2010 20:13 BST from http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.coads.ltm.html click on link sst.ltm.nc under "Download File" in the table. ICOADS_2.5_ltm.nc (original file name sst.ltm.nc) Time series of N-S difference calculated by JJK: Format is YEAR,MONTH,N-S difference ICOADS2.5_n_s.txt ERSSTv3b data sourced via ftp://eclipse.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/ersstv3b/pdo Data downloaded on 25 May 2010 at 16:20 BST. ;Detailed description of data ;http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/sst/ersstv3.php ;ERSST.v3 ;Smith, T.M., R.W. Reynolds, Thomas C. Peterson, and Jay Lawrimore, 2008: Improvements to NOAA's Historical Merged Land-Ocean Surface Temperature Analysis (1880-2006). Journal of Climate,21, 2283-2296. ;Xue, Y., T. M. Smith, and R. W. Reynolds, 2003: Interdecadal changes of 30-yr SST normals during 1871-2000. J. Climate, 16, 1601-1612. Time series files downloaded (format: YEAR, MONTH, ANOMALY, ERROR) aravg.mon.ocean.00N.90N.asc - northern hemisphere average aravg.mon.ocean.90S.00N.asc - southern hemisphere average Time series of N-S difference extracted by JJK to text file: Format is YEAR,MONTH,N-S difference ersst_n_s.txt Processed Hadley Centre time series created for paper: Format is YEAR, MONTH, N-S DIFFERENCE Filenames are SST_NOTUK.txt - HadSST2 excluding UK SST_NOTUS.txt - HadSST2 excluding US SST_RUSS.txt - HadSST2 excluding all but USSR/Russia SST_NOTRUSS.txt - HadSST2 excluding USSR/Russia sst_5x5_no128.txt - HadSST2 excluding deck 128 HadMAT1_anm56jan2002wrtM5_corrected_IPCC4.txt - NMAT The time series were created using the following gridded fields: The format of these fields is as for HadSST2 (see below) SST_NOTUK_fields.txt SST_NOTUS_fields.txt SST_RUSS_fields.txt SST_NOTRUSS_fields.txt sst_5x5_no128_fields.txt HadMAT1_anm56jan2002wrtM5_corrected_IPCC4_fields.txt HadSST2 ------- HadSST2_SST_1850on.txt.gz - SST anomalies relative to 1961-1990 format description taken from here: http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadsst2/data/Read_instructions_sst.txt Data are stored in ASCII Temperatures are stored as degrees C Land squares and missing data are set to -99.99 The month and year are stored at the start of each month. Data Array (72x36) Item ( 1, 1) stores the value for the 5-deg-area centred at 177.5W and 87.5N Item (72, 36) stores the value for the 5-deg-area centred at 177.5E and 87.5S ----- ----- | | | | MON | YR | |_____|_____|__________________________________ 90N |(1,1) | | | | | | | | | |(1,18) | Equ | | |(1,19) | | | | | | | | | 90S |(1,36)_________________________________(72,36)| 180W 0 180E HadCRUT3 -------- HadCRUT3.txt.gz - surface temperature anomalies relative to 1961-1990 format description taken from http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/data/Read_instructions.txt Data are stored in ASCII All values are stored as temperature anomalies in degrees celsius Missing data are set to the value given in the header. (normally -1.0e-30) Grids are 5x5deg monthly The day (irrelevant here), month and year are stored at the start of each month. Data Array (72x36) Item (1,1) stores the value for the 5-deg-area centred at 177.5W and 87.5N Item (72,36) stores the value for the 5-deg-area centred at 177.5E and 87.5S ----- ------ ------------------------------ | | | | | | | | DAY | MON | YR | ROWS | COLS | | |_____|______|_____|______|_______|_________|__ 90N |(1,1) | | | | | | | | | |(1,18) | Equ | | |(1,19) | | | | | | | | | 90S |(1,36)_________________________________(72,36)| 180W 0 180E END==