NERC Data Catalogue Service
Met Office Globally gridded radiosonde temperature anomalies HadAT Datasets (1958-2012)
The HadAT data are global radiosonde gridded temperature anomalies at standard levels (850, 700, 500, 300, 200, 150, 100, 50, and 30hPa) in the troposphere and in the lower stratosphere from 1958 to December 2012. This monthly timeseries are available on a 10 degree longitude by 5 degree latitude basis. This dataset supersedes the HadRT dataset. All values are anomalies relative to the monthly 1966-95 climatology.
The gridded product is derived from 676 individual radiosonde stations with long-term records. Because of the criteria of data longevity the resulting dataset is limited to land areas and primarily Northern Hemisphere locations. Radiosondes are single launch instruments and there have been many changes in instruments and observing practices with time. HadAT has used a neighbour-based approach to attempt to adjust for these effects and produce a homogeneous product suitable for climate applications.
Zonal averages were created by averaging all available gridbox values in each 5 degree latitude band. Large scale mean timeseries for the globe and the tropics (defined here as 20N to 20S) are simply cos(lat) weighted zonal mean field values. This reduces the spatial sampling bias towards Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes. Other plausible large-scale averaging techniques would impact the timeseries values calculated.
Cautionary note from the Met Office Hadley Centre
It is important to note that significant uncertainty exists in radiosonde datasets reflecting the large number of choices available to researchers in their construction and the many heterogeneities in the data. To this end we strongly recommend that users consider, in addition to HadAT, the use of one or more of the following products to ensure their research results are robust. Currently, other radiosonde products of climate quality available from other centres for bona fide research purposes are:
- Radiosonde Atmospheric Temperature Products for Assessing Climate (RATPAC)
- RAdiosonde OBservation COrrection using REanalyses and Radiosonde Innovation Composite Homogenization )
- IUK (Iterative Universal Kriging) Radiosonde Analysis Project
Also see a comparison with Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) data by Remote Sensing Systems (see links under Docs tab below) .
Simple
- Date (Publication)
- 2005-12-10T03:04:09
- Date (Creation)
- 2005-12-10T03:04:09
- Identifier
- NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC) / 1205818e121bd8c12a6029f9cbd11a18
- Maintenance and update frequency
- unknown Unknown
- Update scope
- series Series
- Keywords
-
- Met Office
- HADAT
- radiosonde
- temperature anomalies
- Hadley
- GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
-
- atmospheric conditions
- Access constraints
- otherRestrictions Other restrictions
- Other constraints
- Access to data within this collection is restricted. Please see the individual datasets within this collection for further access details.
- Use constraints
- otherRestrictions Other restrictions
- Spatial representation type
- grid Grid
- Metadata language
- EnglishEnglish
- Topic category
-
- Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere
))
- Begin date
- 1958-01-01T00:00:00
- End date
- 2012-12-31T00:00:00
- Unique resource identifier
- WGS 84
- Distribution format
-
-
Contact data centre for format details.
()
-
Contact data centre for format details.
()
- OnLine resource
-
CEDA Data Catalogue Page
Detail and access information for the resource
- OnLine resource
-
BADC Doc: Summary of HadAT development
No further details.
- OnLine resource
-
BADC Doc: HadAT Uncertainty estimates
No further details.
- OnLine resource
-
Lanzante, J.R. et al., 2003
No further details.
- OnLine resource
-
Lanzante, J.R. et al., 2003
No further details.
- OnLine resource
-
Thorne P.W. et al., 2005; Revisiting radiosonde upper air temperatures from 1958 to 2002, JGR-Atmospheres, D18, 110
No further details.
- OnLine resource
-
RAdiosonde OBservation COrrection using REanalyses and Radiosonde Innovation Composite Homogenization
No further details.
- OnLine resource
-
HadAT Typically used Diagrams
No further details.
- OnLine resource
-
Coleman, H. and Thorne, P.W., 2005
No further details.
- OnLine resource
-
Radiosonde Atmospheric Temperature Products for Assessing Climate (RATPAC)
No further details.
- OnLine resource
-
IUK (Iterative Universal Kriging) Radiosonde Analysis Project
No further details.
- OnLine resource
-
A comparison with Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) data
No further details.
- Hierarchy level
- series Series
Conformance result
- Date (Publication)
- 2010-12-08
- Statement
- Please see data lineage statements for each dataset within this collection for data lineage details.
- File identifier
- 1205818e121bd8c12a6029f9cbd11a18 XML
- Metadata language
- EnglishEnglish
- Character set
- 8-bit variable size UCS Transfer Format, based on ISO/IEC 10646 UTF8
- Hierarchy level
- series Series
- Hierarchy level name
- series
- Date stamp
- 2025-11-15T03:26:54
- Metadata standard name
- UK GEMINI
- Metadata standard version
- 2.3
Overviews
Spatial extent
Provided by
