The National Oceanography Centre Southampton (NOCS) produced a collection of Surface Flux Datasets which contains estimates of the following parameters (including uncertainty) on a 1° monthly mean grid for the global ice-free ocean:

- Air temperature (at 10 m)

- Specific Humidity (at 10 m)

- Wind Speed (at 10 m)

- Sea level pressure

- Sea surface temperature (bulk)

- Latent heat flux

- Sensible heat flux

- Net longwave radiation

- Net shortwave radiation

The datasets are:

NOC1.1 - National Oceanography Centre Surface Flux Climatology (version 1.1) - 1973-2005

NOC1.1a - Adjusted National Oceanography Centre Surface Flux Climatology (version 1.1a) -1973-2005

NOC2.0 - National Oceanography Centre Surface Flux Climatology (version 2.0) - 1973-

Note that the NOC1 climatology was previously referred to as the Southampton Oceanography Centre (SOC) flux climatology and was renamed when the SOC became the NOC. The SOC climatology existed in two versions: the 'Original' set of fields and an 'Adjusted' set in which closure of the ocean heat budget was achieved using inverse analysis. These have now become:

NOC1.1 - Previously the 'Original' SOC climatology including Heat flux and wind stress fields, Freshwater flux fields and Meteorological fields

NOC1.1a - Previously the 'Adjusted' SOC climatology (climatological monthly fields) including Heat flux fields only.

These data can be used for many purposes, including assessing the performance of numerical models, assessing the measurements we get from satellites and understanding how the ocean and atmosphere interact in recent decades.

For background information on Heat Fluxes, please see links under Docs.

Funding has been received from the Hadley Centre, UK Meteorological Office for the production and analysis of this collection of data.