Terrestrial Water Budget Climatology, 1950-1979 Global 1-Degree Grid

Willmott and Rowe created a terrestrial water budget archive on a 1-degree grid. The dataset contains 30-year (1950-1979) monthly climatological means for air temperature, precipitation, evaporation, soil moisture, and snow cover, derived from 13,332 global stations with complete records. Data includes both the original station records and the interpolated 1-degree gridpoint data.

Use Cases

• Modeling historical global water cycles based on monthly climatological means for precipitation and evaporation.
• Analyzing seasonal soil moisture and snow cover patterns based on the 30-year interpolated grid data.
• Creating baseline climatologies for climate model validation based on the station-derived air temperature data.

Strengths

• Derived from 13,332 global stations with complete records, providing a substantial observational foundation.
• Provides 30-year (1950-1979) monthly climatological means for five key hydrological variables.
• Data is available both as original station records and as interpolated 1-degree gridpoint data.

Limitations

• Last updated 1980-01-01 23:59:59.999000; freshness should be verified.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data may reflect geographic or temporal bias inherent to the source stations and the 1950-1979 period.

Provenance

Source

Willmott and Rowe, via NASA Earthdata and organization SCIOPS.

Collection Method

Station data from 13,332 global stations with complete records were used to create 30-year monthly climatological means, which were then interpolated to a 1-degree grid.

Time Range

1950-1979

Freshness

Last updated 1980-01-01 23:59:59.999000.

Geography

Global