Welcome to PaleoClim.org your source of free, high-resolution paleoclimate data for use in biological modeling and GIS.
Below you can download the standard Bioclimatic variables for different paleoclimate simulations. Each download is a “zip” file containing up to 19 GeoTiff (.tif) files, one for each of the bioclimatic variables.
The data are available at 3 different spatial resolutions; from 2.5 arc-minutes (~5 km), 5 arc-minutes (~10 km), and 10 arc-minutes (~20 km). The CHELSA data are also available in 30 arc-seconds (~1 km).
PaleoClim.org Data
| time period (bp) |
10 mins | 5 mins | 2.5 mins | original data citation |
| Pleistocene: late-Holocene, Meghalayan (4.2-0.3 ka), v1.0 | lh-10 | lh-5 | lh-2.5 | Fordham et al., 2017 |
| Pleistocene: mid-Holocene, Northgrippian (8.326-4.2 ka), v1.0 | mh-10 | mh-5 | mh-2.5 | Fordham et al., 2017 |
| Pleistocene: early-Holocene, Greenlandian (11.7-8.326 ka), v1.0 | eh-10 | eh-5 | eh-2.5 | Fordham et al., 2017 |
| Pleistocene: Younger Dryas Stadial (12.9-11.7 ka), v1.0 | yds-10 | yds-5 | yds-2.5 | Fordham et al., 2017 |
| Pleistocene: Bølling-Allerød ( 14.7-12.9 ka), v1.0 | ba-10 | ba-5 | ba-2.5 | Fordham et al., 2017 |
| Pleistocene: Heinrich Stadial 1 (17.0-14.7 ka), v1.0 | hs1-10 | hs1-5 | hs1-2.5 | Fordham et al., 2017 |
| Pleistocene: Last Interglacial (ca. 130 ka), v1.0 | lig-10 | lig-5 | lig-2.5 | Otto-Bliesner et al., 2006 |
| Pleistocene: MIS19 (ca. 787 ka), v1.0* | mis19 -10 | mis19 -5 | mis19 -2.5 | Brown et al., 2018 |
| Pliocene: mid-Pliocene warm period (3.205 Ma), v1.0* | mpwp -10 | mpwp -5 | mpwp -2.5 | Hill 2015 |
| Pliocene: M2 (ca. 3.3 Ma), v1.0* | m2-10 | m2-5 | m2-2.5 | Dolan et al., 2015 |
Related Data
| time period | 10 mins | 5 mins | 2.5 mins | 30 secs | original data citation |
| Current (1979 – 2013): Anthropocene, v1.2b** |
cur-10 | cur-5 | cur-2.5 | cur-30 |
CHELSA |
| Pleistocene: Last Glacial Maximum (ca. 21 ka), v1.2b**, NCAR CCSM4 |
lgm-10 | lgm-5 | lgm-2.5 | lgm-30 | CHELSA |
Brown, Hill, Dolan, Carnaval, Haywood (2018) PaleoClim, high spatial resolution paleoclimate surfaces for global land areas. Nature – Scientific Data. 5:180254
Last update on December 12, 2018.
Support for PaleoClim is from Leeds University, The City College of New York and Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. You are not allowed to redistribute these data without permission.
*Monthly maximum and minimum temperatures were not available in these simulations. In these instances; bio_2, bio_3, bio_5, bio_6, bio_7 could not be created.
**Data are from the ‘Climatologies at high resolution for the earth’s land surface areas’ database. The data were upscaled, masked to corresponding sea-level, converted to matching units, and renamed to match the format of data in PaleoClim.org. Data are redistributed with their explicit permission. The CHELSA current data were also used to downscale all PaleoClim.org data and highly recommend for use as your primary current dataset.