ALBERT

Description: This dataset provides early instrumental data recovered in Latin-America and the Caribbean. Data have been retrieved from 20 countries (Argentina, Bahamas, Belize, Brazil, British Guiana, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, France (Martinique and Guadalupe), Guatemala, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, El Salvador and Suriname) and they cover the 18th and 19th centuries. The main meteorological variables retrieved are air temperature, atmospheric pressure and precipitation but other variables, such as humidity, wind direction, or state of the sky have been retrieved when possible. In total, more than 300.000 early instrumental observations have been rescued. Each archive shows a headline with the following information: ID: 6 letters, the first three make reference to the country and the last three letters to the city/location of the observations. Country: Current name of the country where the observation were recorded. City: Current name of the city or location where the observation were recorded. Period: Time period covered by the series at monthly scale when possible. Resolution: Time resolution of the series. Observers: Name of the people that recorded the measurements. Location Observatory: Latitude and longitude of the observatory in WGS84, altitude when available. The name of the observatory or the street where it was is provided, when the location is exactly known. When the precise location is unknown a probable latitude and longitude is provided. Meteorological variables: Describe all the meteorological variables recorded, its units and the corresponding columns in the file. Data source: The complete reference of the documentary source in which the meteorological record was provided. Descriptive Name: A name of the archive that makes reference to the location and the period covered by the series. Other comments: All the metadata rescued about the observations or the observer. Also provides extreme or rare events recorded by the observer and any other information that could be useful to interpret the series. After the headline, the first columns give the temporal information of the record (year, season, month, day and hour) and the following columns show the measurements of each meteorological variable. Every column has a short descriptive title.

Description: Early instrumental observations are an important tool to understand multidecadal climate variability or put in context specific extreme phenomena. This paper provides early instrumental data recovered in Latin-America and the Caribbean. Data have been retrieved from 20 countries (Argentina, Bahamas, Belize, Brazil, British Guiana, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, France (Martinique and Guadalupe), Guatemala, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, El Salvador and Suriname) and they cover the 18th and 19th centuries. The main meteorological variables retrieved are air temperature, atmospheric pressure and precipitation but other variables, such as humidity, wind direction, or state of the sky have been retrieved when possible. In total, more than 300 000 early instrumental observations have been rescued (96% with daily resolution). Special effort has been done to document all the available metadata (instruments, observers, methodology of observation...) in order to allow further post processing. The compilation is far from being exhaustive but the data set will contribute to a better understanding of the climate variability in the region and to enlarge the overlapping period between instrumental data and natural and documentary proxies.