Datasets | Climdex

Hosted datasets

The indices offered through Climdex have been already calculated for several observational datasets. Although these source datasets are described as gridded analyses, we often offer data for the individual stations too. For the most up-to-date and quality-controlled dataset use HadEX3. If you need near-realtime data use GHCNDEX. HadEX2 is hosted here for comparison studies.

We offer time series for stations where available, whereas for gridded products we also offer average maps, trend maps and raw yearly data across any spatial domain. These products are variously available as text files, NetCDF files and image files.

Please remember to make appropriate reference to the linked publications when using these datasets.

Name	Description	Resolution	Years	Reference	Access
HadEX3	HadEX3 is a gridded analysis using approximately 7,000 stations for temperature and 17,000 stations for precipitation to cover the period 1901-2018. Two versions of HadEX3 are available, one using a reference period of 1961-1990 and another using a reference period of 1981-2010 (this latter dataset only contains indices dependent on the reference period, i.e. it only contains percentile-based indices). Robert Dunn maintains a blog about the the HadEX3 dataset here and the United Kingdom Met Office homepage for the HadEX3 dataset can be found here.	1.875°×1.25°	1901–2018	Dunn et al. 2020	Get data
HadEX2	HadEX2 is a gridded analysis of between 7,000 and 11,000 high quality stations over the 1901–2010 period.	3.75°×2.5°	1901–2010	Donat et al. 2013a	Get data
GHCNDEX	GHCNDEX is a gridded analysis of long-term stations from the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN)-Daily dataset. It is regularly updated with new observations, although more recent data may not be available in some regions.	2.5°×2.5°	1951–present	Donat et al. 2013b	Get data

External datasets

Pre-computed Climdex indices for a number of climate models in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project — Phase 3 (CMIP3) and Phase 5 (CMIP5) are available from Environment Canada.

Visit Environment Canada

References

Donat, M. G., L. V. Alexander, H. Yang, I. Durre, R. Vose, R. J. H. Dunn, K. M. Willett, E. Aguilar, M. Brunet, J. Caesar, B. Hewitson, C. Jack, A. M. G. Klein Tank, A. C. Kruger, J. Marengo, T. C. Peterson, M. Renom, C. Oria Rojas, M. Rusticucci, J. Salinger, A. S. Elrayah, S. S. Sekele, A. K. Srivastava, B. Trewin, C. Villarroel, L. A. Vincent, P. Zhai, X. Zhang and S. Kitching. 2013a. Updated analyses of temperature and precipitation extreme indices since the beginning of the twentieth century: The HadEX2 dataset, J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 118, 2098–2118. doi: 10.1002/jgrd.50150.
Donat, M.G., L.V. Alexander, H. Yang, I. Durre, R. Vose, J. Caesar. 2013b. Global Land-Based Datasets for Monitoring Climatic Extremes, Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 94, 997–1006. doi: 10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00109.1.
Dunn, R. J. H., Alexander, L. V., Donat, M. G., Zhang, X., Bador, M., Herold, N., et al. 2020. Development of an updated global land in-situ-based dataset of temperature and precipitation extremes: HadEX3, JGR: Atmospheres, 125, e2019JD032263. doi: 10.1029/2019JD032263.