Cramer & Leemans Climate Data
The CLIMATE data base of monthly normals for globally gridded climatic variables
This database represents the last major update of the Leemans & Cramer database (Leemans & Cramer 1991), made in 1996 (this work is now discontinued - for more recent grids we refer to the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK). It currently contains long term monthly averages, for the period 1931-60, of mean temperature, temperature range, precipitation, rain days and sunshine hours for the terrestrial surface of the globe, gridded at 0.5 degree longitude/latitude resolution. It was generated from a large data base, using the partial thin-plate splining algorithm developed by Michael F. Hutchinson, Canberra (Hutchinson & Bischof 1983). For years, a documentation was in preparation - but like so many such documentation projects it never reached completion. The version currently online is version 2.1 - this is the same version that is currently used widely around the globe, notably by all groups participating in the IGBP NPP model intercomparison.
Database on web directory
The data are now available from the Pangaea site (thanks to the maintainers of this very useful resource!). If it is useful for you, then I would appreciate being mentioned in the acknowledgement of your publication, and I would also be pleased to hear about it.
For further questions, please contact me under the e-mail address above, or under the following address:
Wolfgang Cramer
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Telegrafenberg
P.O.Box 60 12 03
D-144 12 Potsdam, Germany
Tel.: +49-331-288-2521
Fax: +49-331-288-2600
Reference
Hutchinson, M.F. & Bischof, R.J. 1983. A new method for estimating the spatial distribution of mean seasonal and annual rainfall applied to the Hunter Valley, New South Wales. Austral. Met. Mag. 31:179-184.
Leemans, R. & Cramer, W. 1991. The IIASA database for mean monthly values of temperature, precipitation and cloudiness of a global terrestrial grid. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). RR-91-18.
