CRU Gridded NH Pressure Data

Grid-Point Pressure Data for the Northern Hemisphere (1873-2000)

This dataset only runs to 2000 and has been superseded by newer SLP datasets. CRU still provides it here to support replication and comparison with earlier studies that used it, but we do not recommend it be used for new research.

This dataset contains monthly mean-sea-level pressure data (MSLP) data on a 5° latitude by 10° longitude grid-point basis. The sources of the original chart data are given in Jones (1987). This dataset is also discussed further by Basnett and Parker (1997) and is compared with a similar dataset available from NCAR (Trenberth and Paolino, 1980) by Williams and van Loon (1976).

If using this dataset, please cite:

Jones, P.D., 1987: The early twentieth century Arctic High - fact or fiction? Climate Dynamics 1, 63-75.

File format
for year = 1873 to 2000 for month = 1 to 12 format(5i6) ?,?,month,year,northpole for xbox = 1 to 36 (0E,10E,20E,30E,...,30W,20W,10W) format(16i6) ?,85N,80N,75N,70N,...,25N,20N,15N
Missing data represented by -32768. To convert value `x` to millibars: `mb=(x/100)+1000`

Filename	Size compressed	Size decompressed	Description
mslpnh.dat.gz	1.6 megabytes	5.4 megabytes	Northen Hemisphere Mean Sea Level Pressure
You can download these files from here (right-click then select "Save Target As" or "Save Link As")

Other references:

Basnett, T.A. and Parker, D.E., 1997: Development of the Global Mean Sea Level Pressure Data Set GMSLP2. Climatic Research Technical Note No. 79. Hadley Centre, Meteorological Office, Bracknell, 16pp plus Appendices.

Trenberth, K.E. and Paolino, D.A., 1980: The Northern Hemisphere sea-level pressure data set: trends, errors and discontinuities. Monthly Weather Review 104, 1354-1361.

Williams, J. and van Loon, H., 1976: An examination of the Northern Hemisphere sea-level pressure data set. Monthly Weather Review 104, 1354-1361.

License

These datasets are made available under the Open Database License. Any rights in individual contents of the datasets are licensed under the Database Contents License under the conditions of Attribution and Share-Alike.