Monthly Report on Climate System Separated Volume No.12

--- About Gridded Binary Data of Monthly Sea Surface Temperatures ---


Directory Structure

/sstdata/hist/

In this directory, there are yearly binary files (sstYYYY: YYYY is a year from 1891 to 2005) and each file contains 12 monthly mean Sea Surface Temprature data. GrADS descriptor/control files (sstmon.ctl, sstmon.idx) are also included in this directory.

/sstdata/norm/

In this directory, there is a binary file (sst-clm7100.grb) which contains monthly normals (1971-2000 mean)  and standard deviations (1971-2000) of monthly mean Sea Surface Temperature. GrADS descriptor/control files (sst-clm_mon.ctl, sst-clm7100.idx) are also included in this directory.

File Format

GrADS data descriptor files (sstmon.ctl,sst-clm_mon.ctl)are included in each directory for reference to the data set format.

The outline of the file format is as follows.
Data format WMO binary code FM92 GRIB
Unit degree centigrade
Grid Interval longitudinal 1.0 x latitudinal 1.0 degree in the global (360x180),
Data Range data are recorded in order of the following successively,
  1. start point is at 89.5 degree of South latitude, 0.5 degree of East longitude,
  2. having 360 points from west to east,
  3. having 180 points from south to north,
  4. from January to December.

How to use GRIB format data ?