Overview: The Essential Climate Variables for assessment of climate variability from 1979 to present dataset contains a selection of climatologies, monthly anomalies and monthly mean fields of Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) suitable for monitoring and assessment of climate variability and change. Selection criteria are based on accuracy and temporal consistency on monthly to decadal time scales. The ECV data products in this set have been estimated from climate reanalyses ERA-Interim and ERA5, and, depending on the source, may have been adjusted to account for biases and other known deficiencies. Data sources and adjustment methods used are described in the Product User Guide, as are various particulars such as the baseline periods used to calculate monthly climatologies and the corresponding anomalies. Surface air temperature: This variable is the temperature of air at 2m above the surface of land, sea or in-land waters. 2m temperature is calculated by interpolating between the lowest model level and the Earth's surface, taking account of the atmospheric conditions. Spatial resolution: 0:15:00 (0.25°) Temporal resolution: monthly Temporal extent: 1979 - present Data unit: °C * 10 Data type: Int16 CRS as EPSG: EPSG:4326 Processing time delay: one month

Temperature time series with high spatial and temporal resolutions are important for several applications. The new MODIS Land Surface Temperature (LST) collection 6 provides numerous improvements compared to collection 5. However, being remotely sensed data in the thermal range, LST shows gaps in cloud-covered areas. With a novel method [1] we fully reconstructed the daily global MODIS LST products MOD11C1 and MYD11C1 (spatial resolution: 3 arc-min, i.e. approximately 5.6 km at the equator). For this, we combined temporal and spatial interpolation, using emissivity and elevation as covariates for the spatial interpolation. Here we provide a time series of these reconstructed LST data aggregated as monthly average, minimum and maximum LST maps. [1] Metz M., Andreo V., Neteler M. (2017): A new fully gap-free time series of Land Surface Temperature from MODIS LST data. Remote Sensing, 9(12):1333. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rs9121333 The data available here for download are the reconstructed global MODIS LST products MOD11C1/MYD11C1 at a spatial resolution of 3 arc-min (approximately 5.6 km at the equator; see https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/dataset_discovery/modis/modis_products_table), aggregated to monthly data. The data are provided in GeoTIFF format. The Coordinate Reference System (CRS) is identical to the MOD11C1/MYD11C1 product as provided by NASA. In WKT as reported by GDAL: GEOGCS["Unknown datum based upon the Clarke 1866 ellipsoid", DATUM["Not specified (based on Clarke 1866 spheroid)", SPHEROID["Clarke 1866",6378206.4,294.9786982138982, AUTHORITY["EPSG","7008"]]], PRIMEM["Greenwich",0], UNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433]] Acknowledgments: We are grateful to the NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC) for making the MODIS LST data available. The dataset is based on MODIS Collection V006. File name abbreviations: avg = average of daily averages min = minimum of daily minima max = maximum of daily maxima Meaning of pixel values: The pixel values are coded in degree Celsius * 100 (hence, to obtain °C divide the pixel values by 100.0).