This article describes the dataset of the Kolyma Water-Balance Station located at the upstreams of the Kolyma River (Russia). The dataset combines continuous long-term (1948–1997) observations of water balance, hydrological processes, and permafrost. It allows for study of permafrost hydrology interaction processes in a practically unexplored region. We highlight the main historical stages of the station's existence and its scientific significance, and outline the prospects for its future.

Accurately characterizing the complexities of the ice-sheet dynamic specifically close to the grounding line across the Weddell Sea (WS) sector in the ice-sheet models provides challenges to the scientific community. Our main objective is to comprehend these complexities, adding accuracy to the projection of future ice-sheet dynamics. Therefore, we have developed a new bed elevation digital elevation model across the WS sector, which will be of value to ice-sheet modelling experiments.

Satellites provide useful data to study environmental geographic patterns and long-term trends. We used thermal measurements made by the satellites Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 to create the LakeSST data set. It contains surface temperature data for 442 French water bodies (natural lakes, reservoirs, ponds, gravel pit lakes and quarry lakes) for 1999–2016. This data, with an accuracy of about 1.2 ºC, will allow a better monitoring and study of the thermal behaviour of freshwater bodies.

The Countryside Survey (CS) of Great Britain consists of an extensive set of repeated ecological measurements at a national scale, covering a time span of 29 years. CS was first undertaken in 1978 to monitor ecological and land use change in Britain using standardised procedures for recording ecological data from representative 1 km squares throughout the country. The mapping of ecological landscape elements has subsequently been repeated in 1984, 1990, 1998 and 2007.

The production of 30 959 daily streamflow time series in the Global Streamflow and Metadata Archive (GSIM) project is presented. The paper also describes the development of three metadata products that are freely available. Having collated an unprecedented number of stations and associated metadata, GSIM can be used to advance large-scale hydrological research and improve understanding of the global water cycle.

Time-series indices characterizing streamflow at annual, seasonal and monthly resolution at more than 30 000 stations around the world are presented. The data belong to the Global Streamflow and Metadata Archive (GSIM) and allow for an assessment of water balance components, hydrological extremes and the seasonality of water availability. The quality of the data is tested using automated methods to aid potential users to gauge the suitability of the data for specific applications.

To understand glacier changes in the Swiss Alps at the large scale, long-term datasets are needed. To fill the gap between the existing glacier inventories of the Swiss Alps between 1850 and 1973, we digitized glacier outlines from topographic historical maps of Switzerland for the time periods ca. 1900 and ca. 1935. We found that > 88 % of the digitized glacier area was plausible compared to four inventories. The presented dataset is therefore valuable information for long-term glacier studies.

Climate change and population growth pose severe challenges to 21st century rural Africa. Within the framework of the West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL), an ensemble of high-resolution regional climate change simulations is provided to support adaptation and mitigation measures. This contribution presents the concept and design of the simulations and provides information on the format and dissemination of the available data.

Files with irradiances of a few spectral regions of incident solar radiation and some meteorological variables including concentrations of some air pollutants measured for 2.5 years at 3 stations in Ostrava (CZ) were prepared. Special attention was given to the data quality and the process of quality check was described. This database offers an ensemble of data with high temporal resolution and creates a source on radiation in relation with environment and vegetation in polluted areas of cities.

National economic development is usually measured as gross domestic product (GDP), a quantity that has only been regularly available since 1960. However, many users of economic data require longer time series that are easily accessible and ready-to-use, also by non-experts. This current paper unites various sources of sparsely available GDP estimates from earlier time periods to provide continuous and complete coverage of national GDP for 195 countries from 1850 to the present.

The gravity wave climatology based on atmospheric infrared limb emissions observed by satellite (GRACILE) is a global data set of gravity wave (GW) distributions in the stratosphere and the mesosphere observed by the infrared limb sounding satellite instruments HIRDLS and SABER. Typical distributions of multiple GW parameters are provided. Possible applications are scientific studies, comparison with other observations, or comparison with resolved or parametrized GW distributions in models.

Dahurian larch (Larix gmelinii) is the dominant species in northeast China, which is situated in the southernmost part of the global boreal forest and is undergoing great climate change. Its growth characteristics (tree height, diameter at breast height, tree volume and/or stand volume) were collected from published studies from 1965 to 2015. The data set (N=743) provides a quantitative reference for plantation management practices and boreal forest growth prediction under future climate change.

In the 1990s, ecological survey work was carried out in English landscapes containing semi-natural habitats that were perceived to be under threat, or which represented areas of concern ("key habitats"), complementing the national Countryside Survey of Great Britain. The landscapes were lowland heath, chalk and limestone grasslands, coasts and uplands. Standardised procedures were used to record ecological data from representative 1 km squares throughout England in 1992 and 1993.

A scientific approach is presented to aggregate and harmonize a set of 60 geophysical variables at hourly scale over a decade, and to allow multiannual and multi-variable studies combining atmospheric dynamics and thermodynamics, radiation, clouds and aerosols from ground-based observations.

The Hydrology, Meteorology, and Complexity laboratory of École des Ponts ParisTech (hmco.enpc.fr) has made a data set of optical disdrometer measurements available that come from a campaign involving three collocated devices from two different manufacturers, relying on different underlying technologies (one Campbell Scientific PWS100 and two OTT Parsivel² instruments). The campaign took place in January–February 2016 in the Paris area (France).

Potential evapotranspiration (PET) is necessary input data for most hydrological models, used to simulate river flows. To reconstruct PET prior to the 1960s, simplified methods are needed because of lack of climate data required for complex methods. We found that the McGuinness–Bordne PET equation, which only needs temperature as input data, works best for the UK provided it is calibrated for local conditions. This method was used to produce a 5 km gridded PET dataset for the UK for 1891–2015.

A long-term N fertilizer use history is important for both field investigators and modeling community to examine the cumulative impacts of N fertilizer uses. We developed a spatially explicit time-series data set of nitrogen fertilizer use in agricultural land of the continental US during 1850–2015 at a resolution of 5 km × 5 km based on multiple data sources and historical cropland maps. It contains nitrogen fertilizer use rate, application timing, and ammonium and nitrate form fertilizer use.

We present the data and accomplishments of the multinational global atmospheric measurement program AGAGE (Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment). At high frequency and at multiple sites, AGAGE measures all the important chemicals in the Montreal Protocol for the protection of the ozone layer and the non-carbon-dioxide gases assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. AGAGE uses these data to estimate sources and sinks of all these gases and has operated since 1978.

DamaGIS is a GIS database which aims to collect and assess the severity of flood-related damage. The reason for creating this database is the lack of precise damage data available to calibrate and validate flood risk assessment models. To this end, DamaGIS offers highly precise and easily accessible flood-related damage data. It uses multiple sources such as social networks. Since 2011, 729 damages caused by 23 flood events in the south of France have been reported within the database.

The Tibet-Obs soil properties dataset was compiled based on in situ and laboratory measurements of soil profiles across three climate zones on the Tibetan Plateau. The appropriate parameterization schemes of soil hydraulic and thermal properties were discussed for their applicability in land surface modeling. The uncertainties of existing soil datasets were evaluated. This paper contributes to land surface modeling and hydro-climatology communities for their studies of the third pole region.

This paper presents a hydro-sedimentological dataset for the Isábena catchment, northeastern Spain, for the period 2010–2018. It contains the results of several years of monitoring rainfall, discharge and sediment flux and analysing soil spectroscopic properties. The dataset features data in high spatial and temporal resolution suitable for the advanced process understanding of water and sediment fluxes, their origin and connectivity and sediment budgeting and for model development.

Following the last glacial period the sea level started rising rapidly. The sea started entering the Gulf of Trieste approximately 10000 years ago and since then marine Holocene sediment has been depositing. We wanted to understand how thick this sediment is, so we used modern scientific equipment which lets us determine the depth of the seafloor and the sediment below. The sediment is thickest in the SE part of the gulf (approx. 5 m). In the other parts it is very thin, except near the coast.

This publication presents results achieved within the GEWEX Water Vapor Assessment (G-VAP). An overview of available water vapour data records based on satellite observations and reanalysis is given. If a minimum temporal coverage of 10 years is applied, 22 data records remain. These form the G-VAP data archive, which contains total column water vapour, specific humidity profiles and temperature profiles. The G-VAP data archive is designed to ease intercomparison and climate model evaluation.

Oceanographic data have been collected in the Arctic Ocean over many decades. They were measured by a large variety of platforms. Most of these data are publicly available from the World Ocean Database (WOD). This important online archive, however, does not contain all available modern data and has quality problems in the upper water layers. To enable a quick access to nearly all available temperature and salinity profiles, we compiled UDASH, a complete data archive with a higher quality.

In early 2016 the NOAA's El Niño Rapid Response Field Campaign documented the ongoing strong event and its impacts. Observations from the warmed Pacific included 10 weeks of surface meteorology from Kiritimati Island and 4 weeks of surface meteorology and air–sea fluxes from NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown. We have vetted the data, identifying issues and minimizing their impacts when possible. Measurements include a meter of rain at Kiritimati, and continuous ocean and air conditions from the ship.

Radiosonde data collected during NOAA's El Niño Rapid Response Field Campaign in early 2016 have been reprocessed and lightly quality controlled. Temperature, humidity, and wind soundings from Kiritimati and NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown capture the repeated advance and retreat of the ITCZ at Kiritimati, a variety of marine tropospheric environments encountered by the ship, and lower-stratospheric features of the 2015 2016 QBO (quasi-biennial oscillation).

This sample collection presents a database that integrates surficial sediment samples collected and analysed for textural characterization within the framework of a series of research projects. A total of 4727 samples within the framework of 24 projects developed between 1996 and 2015 along the southern Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula, focusing along the Portuguese coast, including sediments from the continental shelf, beaches, estuaries, and coastal lagoons.

Thirty-one years of hourly gridded (10 m) air temperature, relative humidity, dew point temperature, precipitation amount, and precipitation phase data are presented for the Reynolds Creek Experimental Watershed, Idaho, which is part of the Critical Zone Observatory network. The air temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation are distributed from weather station measurements. This dataset covers a wide range of weather extremes in the rain–snow transition zone from 1984 to 2014.