Datasets for Statistical Analysis: Climatology

Climatology

First, a source of great, free maps is Coastline Extractor.

There is also an R library for plotting maps of Australia.

The recent version of R is available from

Some extra R packages may be of use; they can be downloaded from the above webpages.

Many climatic and meteorological data sets are freely available from many sources. Here are some (many taken from Richard Chandler's web pages):

The Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory's Introduction to Climate Data. An excellent free data archive on the web. Monthly temperature records and precipitation from stations around the globe are maintained (going back to the mid-17th century in some cases!). Topographic information can also be downloaded. Also see the LDEO Climate Group home page.
The British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC). You need to register with BADC to use the data; you may not be able to use them for commercial purposes.
The US Agricultural Research Service Water Database. Precipitation and streamflow data from small agricultural watersheds in the USA. Periods of record range from 1 to 50 years.
FTP site from the Australian Bureau of Meterology. Quality-controlled temperature and rainfall data from Australia (some going back over a century); lots of documentation.
The NOAA North-West Network Data Access Page. Mainly links to other data sources.
Data available from the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia.
Windspeed data from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI). High-quality observational windspeed data.

Some data files also used (but aren't necessarily climatological):

Constructed by Peter Dunn
Last change: 08 May 2006