Physical Sciences Division

Hurrell, J.W., 1995: Decadal trends in the North Atlantic Oscillation and relationships to regional temperature and precipitation. Science 269, 676-679.
Jones, P.D., Jónsson, T. and Wheeler, D., 1997: Extension to the North Atlantic Oscillation using early instrumental pressure observations from Gibraltar and South-West Iceland. Int. J. Climatol. 17, 1433-1450.

Note, values are now from CPC as they update their data through the present
From CPC: The loading pattern of AO (AAO) is defined as the first leading mode from the EOF analysis of monthly mean height anomalies at 1000-hPa (NH) or 700-hPa (SH). Note that year-round monthly mean anomaly data has been used to obtain the loading patterns. Since the AO and AAO have the largest variability during the cold sesaon (variance of AO/AAO), the loading patterns primarily capture characteristics of the cold season patterns. Daily and monthly AO (AAO) indices are constructed by projecting the daily and monthly mean 1000-hPa (700-hPa) height anomalies onto the leading EOF mode. Both time series are normalized by the standard deviation of the monthly index (1979-2000 base period). Since the loading pattern of AO (AAO) is obtained using the monthly mean height anomaly dataset, the index corresponding to each loading pattern becomes one when it is normalized by the standard deviation of the monthly index.Values and description

Values and references Data from CPC

GISST 1948-1949
Reconstructed Reynolds 1950-1981
OI 1982-present

GISST 1948-1949
Reconstructed Reynolds 1950-1981
OI 1982-present

GISST 1948-1949
Reconstructed Reynolds 1950-1981
OI 1982-present

Note: this index is newly computed from a new dataset. Please use it and note that it supersedes the old indices. The data is calculated from the Kalplan SST. See the AMO webpage for more details.

Note: this index is newly availablecomputed from a new dataset. See the AMM webpage for more details.

(Definition slightly changed: old version available).The timeseries of SST anomalies averaged over 60W to 20W, 6N to 18N and 20W to 10W, 6N to 10N map. Data is obtained from the COADS dataset for 1951-1991 and NCEP afterwards. Anomalies were calculated relative to the 1951-2000 climatology, smoothed by three months running mean procedure and projected onto 20 leading EOFs. Month of data is the center of the 3 months that are smoothed. More information and the indexes forecasted values are available.

Penland, C., and L. Matrosova, 1998: "Prediction of tropical Atlantic sea aurface temperatures using Linear Inverse Modeling," J. Climate, March, 483-496 pp.

(Definition slightly changed: old version available). The timeseries of SST anomalies averaged over the the Caribbean. Data is obtained from the COADS dataset for 1951-1991 and NCEP after. Anomalies were calculated relative to the 1951-2000 climatology, smoothed by three months running mean procedure and projected onto 20 leading EOFs. More information and the indexes forecasted values are available.

Note: this index is newly computed from a new dataset. Please use it and note that it supersedes the old indices. The data is calculated from the Kalplan SST. See the AMO webpage for more details.

Note that time series is scaled by 1e25. Values are 3-month running means except for the last month which is a 2-month average.

http://precip.gsfc.nasa.gov/ESPItable.html Please cite "ENSO Indices Based on Patterns of Satellite-Derived Precipitation" Curtis and Adler in J. of Climate, 13,2786 (2000). Time series that uses rainfall data in the Tropical Pacific to describe ENSO events.

http://www.tropmet.res.in/ Please cite the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. CORE-MONSOON INDIA RAINFALL (1871-1999) 7 SUB 776,942 SQ.KM.

http://jisao.washington.edu/data_sets/sahel/ From Mitchell: The averaging region is based on the rotated principal component analysis of average June through September African rainfall presented in Janowiak (1988, J. Climate, 1, 240-255). Stations within 20-8N, 20W-10E are obtained from the National Center for Atmospheric Research World Monthly Surface Station Climatology (WMSSC), and 14 retained which had complete or almost complete records for 1950-93. See link for stations.

Calculated using NCDC's climate division dataset. Monthly precipitation values for each of the climate divisions in Arizona and New Mexico are are averaged to produce a single monthly value. Reference: personal communication, Catherine Smith. Also,
NCDC, 1994, Time Bias Corrected Divisional Temperature-Precipitation-Drought Index. Documentation for dataset TD-9640. Available from DBMB, NCDC, NOAA, Federal Building, 37 Battery Park Ave. Asheville, NC 28801-2733. 12pp.

http://jisao.washington.edu/data_sets/brazil/ From Mitchell: The northeast Brazil rainfall index is calculated from data for Fortaleza (3.7S, 38.5W) and Quixeramobim (5.3S, 39.3W) Brazil obtained from the NCAR World Monthly Surface Station Climatology. Climatological mean is for 1950-79.

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/getdata.html For NGDC. Go to bottom of page. t To cite, "The 10.7cm Solar Flux Data are provided as a service by the National Research Council of Canada". They would appreciate a preprint or at least a reference if you use the data (URL is http://www.drao.nrc.ca/index_eng.shtml.. Time series is ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/SOLAR_DATA/SOLAR_RADIO/FLUX/MONTHLY.OBS.

Values change over time!
Data values are in the file http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt from NASA/GISS. Please read and refer to this web page plus the main web page describing various temperature indices at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/. Note, the index is an anomaly index. They have comments in the datafile and the writeup on obtaining an absolute global mean temperatures. Please reference the papers:

Christy, J.R., R.W. Spencer, and W.D. Braswell 2000. J. Atmos. Oceanic Tech. 17, 1153.
Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, M. Sato and R. Reynolds 1996. Global surface air temperature in 1995: Return to pre-Pinatubo level. Geophys. Res. Lett. 23, 1665-1668.
Hansen, J., M. Sato, J. Glascoe and R. Ruedy 1998. A common-sense climate index: Is climate changing noticeably? Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 95, 4113-4120.
Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, J. Glascoe, and M. Sato 1999. GISS analysis of surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res. 104, 30997-31022.
Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, M. Sato, M. Imhoff, W. Lawrence, D. Easterling, T. Peterson, and T. Karl 2001. A closer look at United States and global surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res. 106, 23947-23963
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2001. Climate Change 2001 (J.T. Houghton et al., Eds.), Cambridge Univ. Press, New York.
National Research Council 2000. Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change. National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 85 pp.
Peterson, T.C., and R.S. Vose 1997. An overview of the Global Historical Climatology Network temperature database. Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc. 78, 2837-2849.
Rayner, N. 2000. HadISST1 Seaice and sea surface temperature files. Hadley Center, Bracknell, U.K.
Reynolds, R.W., N.A. Rayner, T.M. Smith, D.C. Stokes, and W. Wang 2002. An improved in situ and satellite SST analysis for climate. J. Climate 15, 1609-1625, doi:10.1175/1520-0442(2002)015<1609:AIISAS>2.0.CO;2.
Reynolds, R.W., and T.M. Smith 1994. Improved global sea surface temperature analyses. J. Climate 7, 929-948, doi:10.1175/1520-0442(1994)007<0929:IGSSTA>2.0.CO;2
Smith, T.M., R.W. Reynolds, R.E. Livesay, and D.C. Stokes 1996. Reconstruction of historical sea surface temperature using empirical orthogonal functions. J. Climate 9, 1403-1420.