The Comprehensive Historical Upper-Air Network (CHUAN)

On this site we provide monthly mean historical upper-air data prior to the International Geophysical Year 1957. The data set is based on 16.4 million profiles from almost 4000 station records.

"The Comprehensive Historical Upper Air Network (CHUAN)" (Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 91, DOI: 10.1175/2009BAMS2852.1):
A. Stickler, A.N. Grant, T. Ewen, T.F. Ross, R.S. Vose, J. Comeaux, P. Bessemoulin, K. Jylhä, W.K. Adam, P. Jeannet, A. Nagurny, A.M. Sterin, R. Allan, G.P. Compo, T. Griesser, and S. Brönnimann 

The current version is version 1.61

Download station list

Station list (ASCII tab delimited)   

Station list documentation (pdf)

Download data

corrected, adjusted to daily mean, homogenised (C)

(ASCII tab delimited, ca. 86 MB)

uncorrected data (R)

(ASCII tab delimited, ca. 88 MB)

supplemented (same as C, but with neighbouring stations merged) (S)

(ASCII tab delimited, ca. 0.2 MB)

Download data description

Version history (pdf)

File name nomenclature (pdf)

Data format description (pdf)

The station list and the data files are ASCII tab delimited .txt files.

The data files have been compressed with WinRAR.

Reconstructions of Upper-Level Temperature and Geopotential Height Fields

T. Griesser, S. Brönnimann, A. Grant, T. Ewen, and Alexander Stickler

Here, we also provide monthly mean statistical reconstructions of upper-air fields back to 1880. The reconstructions are based on surface as well as upper-air data and calibrated with ERA-40. 

Technical Report

Download reconstructions 1920-1957

Reconstructed fields (GPH and Temp.)

(netCDF, ca. 94 MB)                                                                                       

Reconstructed anomaly fields

(GPH and Temp., climatology 1961-90) (netCDF, ca. 94 MB)                                              

RE fields (error measures)

(netCDF, ca. 94 MB)

Download full reconstructions 1880-1957

Reconstructed fields NH

(netCDF, ca. 278 MB)                                                                                                           

Reconstructed fields SH

(netCDF, ca. 278 MB)                                                                                                                      

Reconstructed fields Tropics

(netCDF, ca. 152 MB)

Reconstructed anomaly fields NH

(netCDF, ca. 278 MB)                                                                                             

Reconstructed anomaly fields SH

(netCDF, ca. 278 MB)                                                                                           

Reconstructed anomaly fields Tropics

(netCDF, ca. 152 MB)

RE fields NH

(netCDF, ca. 278 MB)                                                                                                                                                   

RE fields SH

(netCDF, ca. 278 MB)                                                                                                                                                   

RE fields Tropics

(netCDF, ca. 152 MB)