A free gridded dataset of some variables such as temperature and percipitation is available HERE for free. As far as i know this is for Europe only, however it may also be available at a global scale.

http://eca.knmi.nl/download/ensembles/download.php#datafiles

For rainfall, look to our recent paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261675491_Soil_as_a_natural_rain_gauge_estimating_global_rainfall_from_satellite_soil_moisture_data

You can find the rainfall dataset we obtained from satellite soil moisture data (also on RG) and the link to other datasets we used as benchmark (in the supplementary material).

Moreover, you can use freely available re-analyses data - i.e. from ERA Interim (1979-recent time).

http://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/data/interim_full_daily/

The re-analysis provides data for air temperature, precipitation, air pressure, air humidity, .... with different resolution - for free.

Cheers,

Luca

Article Soil as a natural rain gauge: Estimating global rainfall fro...

Dear Gergely and dear Luca,

very very useful information and links, many thanks to you!

If its episodic events like tropical cyclones, we host hurricane wind field data for the mid 1990s through 2013 at our site: http://www.hwind.co/legacy_data/

Those data are publicly available since they were produced when HWind was a NOAA research effort.  HWind is now a commercial operation so data for 2014 and beyond access is through subscription.  We also partner with academic organizations to assist with their research.

The data from ecmwf are not very easy to get. I make a tutorial for MacosX here:

http://max2.ese.u-psud.fr/epc/conservation/Girondot/Publications/Blog_r/Entrees/2014/6/22_Batch_method_to_access_ECMWF_database.html

For windows, the batch method cannot work and you must download individual files one after the other.

To get the data, the simplest solution (in my opinion) is to read the cdf file using R. I make a small tutorial for that here:

http://max2.ese.u-psud.fr/epc/conservation/Girondot/Publications/Blog_r/Entrees/2014/4/27_Comparison_between_packages_RnetCDF%2C_ncdf4_and_ncdf.html

Good luck... it is not easy task but you can get very nice result.

Marc

IMD, India can also provide the data from the regional centres established at different corner of the country.

  There is a special R package,  that delivers you NCEP data (cloudcover, wind and so on). The data are worldwide an the nice thing is that package can download only relevant parts of the database.

Some description is here:  https://sites.google.com/site/michaelukemp/rncep

And an introductory article at the Methods in Ecology and Evolution is here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2041-210X.2011.00138.x/abstract

   Cheers,

     Eldar

Try to find daily data of key climatic variables at the NCDC website, or any national MET websites if you are interested in specific regions.

You can download global weather station data, updated daily, from NCDC:

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/

Dear Guido,

The International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) maintains a Data Library which consists of hundreds of climate and meteorological datasets. Although these datasets are available across a variety spatial and temporal scales, there are many that are exist on a global scale at a high temporal resolution.  One of the main benefits of the data library is that it affords a consistent method of visualizing unique datasets regardless of the source of the data. Mapping variables, developing time series and Hovmoller plots and downloading raw data is all possible using the IRI Data Library. 

For example, 

Linked below is a map of daily rainfall from NASA TRMM over most of the globe. 

http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/SOURCES/.NASA/.GES-DAAC/.TRMM_L3/.TRMM_3B42/.v7/.daily/.precipitation/figviewer.html?my.help=&map.T.plotvalue=1+Jan+2014&map.Y.units=degree_north&map.Y.plotlast=50N&map.here.x=0&map.here.y=0&map.url=X+Y+fig-+colors+coasts+-fig&map.domain=+%7B+%2Fprecipitation+0.0+300+plotrange+%2FT+5844.5+plotvalue+%7D&map.domainparam=+%2Fplotaxislength+432+psdef+%2Fplotborder+72+psdef+%2FXOVY+null+psdef&map.zoom=Zoom&map.Y.plotfirst=50S&map.X.plotfirst=0&map.X.units=degree_east&map.X.modulus=360&map.X.plotlast=0&map.precipitation.plotfirst=0.0&map.precipitation.units=mm%2Fday&map.precipitation.plotlast=100&map.newurl.grid0=X&map.newurl.grid1=Y&map.newurl.land=draw+coasts&map.newurl.plot=colors&map.plotaxislength=432&map.plotborder=72&map.fnt=Helvetica&map.fntsze=12&map.color_smoothing=1&map.XOVY=auto&map.iftime=25&map.mftime=25&map.fftime=200

Individual pixels can be extracted for further analysis, including time series development. 

The link to the front page of the Data Library is below.

http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/

Regards, 

Andrew

http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/

many thanks Andrew