Global Temperature Patterns in Past Centuries: Readme file
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               World Data Center A- Paleoclimatology
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NOTE: PLEASE CITE CONTRIBUTORS WHEN USING THIS DATA!!!!!


NAME OF DATA SET: Global Temperature Patterns in Past Centuries
LAST UPDATE: 10/2000
CONTRIBUTOR: Michael E. Mann

IGBP PAGES/WDCA CONTRIBUTION SERIES NUMBER: 2000-075
SUGGESTED DATA CITATION:
Mann, M.E., E.P. Gille, R.S. Bradley, M.K. Hughes, J.T. Overpeck, F.T. Keimig and W. Gross. 2000.
Global Temperature Patterns in Past Centuries
IGBP PAGES/World Data Center-A for Paleoclimatology
Data Contribution Series # 2000-075.
NOAA/NGDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder CO, USA.

ORIGINAL REFERENCE:
Mann, M.E., E.P. Gille, R.S. Bradley, M.K. Hughes, J.T. Overpeck, F.T. Keimig and W. Gross. 2000.
Global Temperature Patterns in Past Centuries: An interactive presentation. 
Earth Interactions, 4-4, 1-29.

ABSTRACT:
The recent availability of global networks of annual or seasonal resolution proxy data, combined with 
the few long instrumental and historical climate records available during the past few centuries, 
make it possible now to reconstruct annual and seasonal spatial patterns of temperature variation, 
as well as hemispheric, global-mean, and regional temperature trends, several centuries back in time.

Reconstructions of large-scale global or hemispheric trends during centuries past can place the instrumental 
assessments of climate during the 20th century in a longer term perspective, and provide more robust evidence 
regarding the roles of potential climate forcings over time. The reconstructed spatial patterns lead to 
important inferences regarding ENSO-scale variability, the spatial influences of climatic forcings, and the 
regional patterns that underlie large-scale climate variations. Here we expand upon the proxy-based annual 
global temperature pattern reconstructions described recently by Mann et al (1998). We present for the first 
time, seasonally-resolved versions of the proxy-reconstructed surface temperature patterns, and diagnose the 
seasonal differences between key climate indices and patterns of variations. We enable the reader to interactively 
examine spatial as well as temporal details (and their uncertainties) of yearly temperatures back in time for 
both annual-mean and seasonal windows. Annual and seasonal time histories of reconstructed Northern Hemisphere (NH),
 Southern Hemisphere (SH), and global (GLB) mean temperature are made available, as are time histories of the 
NINO3 index describing El Nino-related variations, time histories for particular regions of interest such as 
North America and Europe, and time series for temperature variations in different (e.g. tropical and extratropical) 
latitude bands. Time histories for specific gridpoints are available along with their estimated uncertainties. 
Time histories for the different eigenvectors (ie, the reconstructed Principal Components or "PC"s) are also 
available, along with the raw instrumental series, which underlie the temperature pattern reconstructions. For 
both the annual mean and seasonally-resolved temperature reconstructions, the reader can directly compare 
reconstructed patterns for different years, as well as the raw and reconstructed patterns during calibration and 
verification intervals, and view animated year-by-year sequences of reconstructed global temperature patterns. We 
also analyze in more detail the statistical relationships between climate forcings and temperature variations, 
taking into account potential lagged responses to climate forcings in empirical attribution analyses. 

ADDITIONAL REFERENCE:
Mann, M.E., R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes. 1998. Global-Scale Temperature Patterns and 
Climate Forcing Over the Past Six Centuries. Nature, 392, 779-787.

DATA:
The data is split into three subcategories: annual, warm season and cold season.
In each category there is Reconstructed Data(1730-1980), 
Raw Instrumental Data- Verification(1854-1901), Calibration(1902-1993), 
and Eigenvector Filtered Raw Data(1902-1993). 
Data can be found in annual grids or time series at one particular grid cell, There were 1082 grid cells available 
for the calibration period and 219 available for the verification period. See original reference and additional reference 
for full description of methods. 

FILE DESCRIPTIONS:

Annual:
reconstructions
mann[1730-1980].dat - gridded temperature reconstruction grids by year
grid[1-1082].dat - Annual reconstruction of temperature for each grid cell

instrumental
manr[1854-1993].dat - gridded instrumental Verification/calibration data by year
graw[1-1082].dat - instrumental Verification/calibration data by grid cell

eigenvector filtered
manf[1902-1993].dat - gridded Eigenvector filtered raw data by year
gfil[1-1082].dat - Eigenvector filtered raw data by grid cell number

pc0[1-5].out - Principle Components- Time history of EOF's
rpc0[1-5].out - time histories of first five reconstructed principal components series

nhem-dense.dat - comparison of reconstructed and observed temperature during dense coverage period. 

nino3.dat - reconstruction of NINO3 SST index

A Java animation of the annual reconstructions can be found here:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ei/animation/annimann.html


Cold Season:
mcrec[1730-1980].dat - gridded temperature reconstructions by year
mcraw[1854-1993].dat - gridded instrumental Verification/calibration data by year
mcfil[1902-1993].dat - gridded Eigenvector filtered raw data by year

Warm season:
mwrec[1750-1980].dat - gridded temperature reconstructions by year
mwraw[1854-1993].dat - gridded instrumental Verification/calibration data by year
mwfil[1902-1993].dat - gridded Eigenvector filtered raw data by year