This is the download page for the daily gridded observational dataset for precipitation and temperature Southeast Asia called SA-OBS. Bookmark this page for future direct access!

Actual version and update policy
SA-OBS datafiles
Access to smaller chunks
Visualize daily maps
Access to underlying station data
Citation and acknowledgement
Guidance for users
Terms of use
Example of SA-OBS use

SACA&D staff will maintain and update the SA-OBS gridded dataset. If you haven't registered yourself yet as an SA-OBS user, we encourage you to do so here:

The datafiles contain gridded data for 4 elements (daily mean temperature TG, daily minimum temperature TN, daily maximum temperature TX and daily precipitation sum RR). They cover the area: 20S-25N x 80E-180E. The data files are in compressed NetCDF format and range in size from 28 Mb - 205 Mb. There are 2 different grid resolutions. Data is made available on a 0.25 and 0.5 degree regular lat-lon grid. Besides 'best estimate' values, separate files are provided containing daily standard errors and elevation. See van den Besselaar et al. (2016) for further details. The Global 30 Arc-Second Elevation Data Set (GTOPO30), a global raster Digital Elevation Model (DEM) with a horizontal grid spacing of 30 arc seconds (approximately 1 kilometer) developed by USGS is used for the elevation file.

Follow this link if you want to download SA-OBS in smaller chunks.

Follow this link if you want to visualize the daily gridded SA-OBS fields.

A list of station series used for the actual version of SA-OBS is provided for TG, TN, TX and RR. Part of these series are freely available from the daily data webpage. For the remaining series we do not (yet) have the release permission from the data owners.

Whenever you publish research or applications based on these gridded data products, you should include the following acknowledgement and citations.

SA-OBS temperature and precipitation:
"We acknowledge the SA-OBS dataset and the data providers in the SACA&D project (http://sacad.database.bmkg.go.id/)"
"Else J.M. van den Besselaar, Gerard van der Schrier, Richard C. Cornes, Aris Suwondo, Iqbal and Albert M.G. Klein Tank. 2017: SA-OBS: a daily gridded surface temperature and precipitation dataset for Southeast Asia. Journal of Climate, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0575.1"

Gridded datasets derived through interpolation of station data have a number of potential inaccuracies and errors. These errors can be introduced either by the propagation of errors in the station data or by limitations in the ability of the interpolation method to estimate grid values from the underlying station network. An important finding is that, in areas where relatively few stations have been used for the interpolation, both precipitation and temperature are over-smoothed. This leads to reduced interpolated values relative to the "true" area-averages, in particular for extremes.

The SACA&D data policy applies. These observational data are strictly for use in non-commercial research and non-commercial education projects only. Scientific results based on these data must be submitted for publication in the open literature without any delay linked to commercial objectives. If you are unsure about the terms "commercial", "research", and "education", please contact the SACA&D staff at sacad.database@bmkg.go.id for clarification.

An example using the SA-OBS dataset is shown here.