The Comprehensive Historical Upper-Air Network

To better understand variability in weather and climate, it is vital to address past atmospheric circulation. This need requires meteorological information not just from the surface but also at upper levels. Current global upper-level datasets only reach back to the 1940s or 1950s and do not cover some important periods in the first half of the twentieth century. Extending the observational record is therefore considered important in order to analyze climate variability in the past and verify global climate models used to predict future climate change. Although earlier upper-air data from platforms such as radiosondes, aircraft, pilot balloons, registering balloons, and kites are available from various sources, no systematic compilation and quality assessment of upper-level data prior to the International Geophysical Year (1957/58) has ever been performed. Here we present the Comprehensive Historical Upper-Air Network (CHUAN). It is a consistent global historical upper-air dataset that has been derived fr...