An observational record of global gridded near-surface air temperature change over land and ocean from 1781

Morice, C. P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5656-1021, Berry, D. I., Cornes, R. C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7688-4485, Cowtan, K. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0189-1437, Cropper, T., Hawkins, E. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9477-3677, Kennedy, J. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6841-7289, Osborn, T. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8425-6799, Rayner, N. A., Recinos Rivas, B. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0647-8131, Schurer, A. P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9176-3622, Taylor, M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3473-3478, Teleti, P. R., Wallis, E. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2475-0899, Winn, J. and Kent, E. C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6209-4247 (2025) An observational record of global gridded near-surface air temperature change over land and ocean from 1781. Earth System Science Data, 17 (12). pp. 7079-7100. ISSN 1866-3516 doi: 10.5194/essd-17-7079-2025

Abstract/Summary

We present a new gridded data set of air temperature change across global land and ocean extending back to the 1780s. This data set, called the GloSAT reference analysis, has two novel features: it uses marine air temperature observations rather than the sea surface temperature measurements typically used by pre-existing data sets, and it extends further into the past than existing merged land and ocean instrumental temperature records which typically estimate temperature changes from the middle to late 19th century onwards. New estimates of diurnal-heating biases in marine air temperatures have enabled the use of daytime observations, extending the data set further into the past compared to nighttime-only marine air temperature data. The data set uses an extended version of the CRUTEM5 station database over land areas, incorporating newly available bias adjustments for non-standard thermometer enclosures used prior to the adoption of Stevenson screens and new climatological normal estimates for stations with limited data in the 1961–1990 baseline period. Land and marine temperature anomalies are combined to produce a gridded data set following the methods developed for HadCRUT5. The GloSAT global and hemispheric temperature anomaly series show close agreement with those based on sea surface temperature for much of the overlapping period of their records but with slightly less warming overall. The GloSAT reference analysis is available from https://doi.org/10.5285/a2519624a593402a83246bd359d098be (Morice et al., 2025b), the GloSATLAT data set is available from https://doi.org/10.5285/ef237f578329487eb02fb42f9db56bb2 (Morice et al., 2025a), and the GloSATMAT data set is available from https://doi.org/10.5285/e6251bf935304cfbb9c9269dc7757a35 (Cornes et al., 2025b).

Item Type	Article
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/127624
Identification Number/DOI	10.5194/essd-17-7079-2025
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > NCAS Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	Copernicus Publications
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