An improved method of constructing a database of monthly climate observations and associated high-resolution grids

A database of monthly climate observations from meteorological stations is constructed. The database includes six climate elements and extends over the global land surface. The database is checked for inhomogeneities in the station records using an automated method that refines previous methods by using incomplete and partially overlapping records and by detecting inhomogeneities with opposite signs in different seasons. The method includes the development of reference series using neighbouring stations. Information from different sources about a single station may be combined, even without an overlapping period, using a reference series. Thus, a longer station record may be obtained and fragmentation of records reduced. The reference series also enables 1961-90 normals to be calculated for a larger proportion of stations. The station anomalies are interpolated onto a 0.5° grid cove ring the global land surface (excluding Antarctica) and combined with a published normal from 1961-90. Thus, climate grids are constructed for nine climate variables (temperature, diurnal temperature range, daily minimum and maximum temperatures, precipitation, wet-day frequency, frost-day frequency, vapour pressure, and cloud cover) for the period 1901-2002. This dataset is known as CRU TS 2.1 and is publicly available (http:// www.cru.uea.ac uk/).