>On Sunday, March 29, 2009, Geert Jan van Oldenborgh of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute added ERSST.v3b data to Climate Explorer. Many thanks to Dr Van Oldenborgh for his quick response to my email request.
The ERSST.v3b version of NCDC’s Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature dataset replaced the ERSSST.v2 version, which is no longer being updated.
This post is a quick introduction to the data, with time-series graphs of the SST data on global, hemispheric, and individual ocean bases. I’ve also included the NINO3.4 SST anomaly data. In each graph, the data from January 1854 to February 2009 is illustrated without filtering. The exception to this is one graph, Figure 2, and it has been smoothed with a 37-month running-average filter.
GLOBAL
Figure 1 illustrates the ERSST.v3b Global SST Anomaly data. There are some minor differences between it and earlier versions of the ERSST data, which will not be discussed in this post.
(Note that the 1945 shift in the ERSST.v3b data does not appear to have had any additional corrections in response to the Thompson et al (2008) paper “A large discontinuity in the mid-twentieth century in observed global-mean surface temperature”. I discussed that 1945/46 shift in my posts The Large 1945 SST Discontinuity Also Appears in Cloud Cover and Marine Air Temperature Data and Part 2 of The Large SST Discontinuity Also Appears in Cloud Cover and Marine Air Temperature Data. The latter post also illustrates the shift in wind speed data at the same time, but in the opposite direction.)
http://i42.tinypic.com/2vltxjk.jpg
Figure 1
The ERSST.v3b Global SST anomaly data includes the dip from ~1878 to ~1910 and the rebound from ~1910 to ~1940, similar to earlier versions of the data. Refer to Figure 2. And consistent with the earlier versions, there is no significant difference between the SST anomalies of the 1870s and those of the late 1970s.
http://i40.tinypic.com/2euo4fr.jpg
Figure 2
I’ll end my commentary here and let the graphs speak for themselves.
NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN HEMISPHERES
Northern Hemisphere
http://i40.tinypic.com/2gw9v6t.jpg
Figure 3
#####
Southern Hemisphere
http://i43.tinypic.com/mueqnl.jpg
Figure 4
INDIVIDUAL OCEANS
North Atlantic (0 to 75N, 78W to 10E)
http://i44.tinypic.com/2dh8bd5.jpg
Figure 5
#####
South Atlantic (0 to 60S, 70W to 20E)
http://i40.tinypic.com/2u6l9tv.jpg
Figure 6
#####
North Pacific (0 to 65N, 100E to 270E, where 270E=90W)
http://i41.tinypic.com/241tro1.jpg
Figure 7
#####
South Pacific (0 to 60S, 145E to 290E, where 290E=70W)
http://i40.tinypic.com/z3cq0.jpg
Figure 8
#####
Indian Ocean (30N to 60S, 20E to 145E)
http://i40.tinypic.com/2q83fh3.jpg
Figure 9
#####
Arctic Ocean (65N to 90N)
http://i42.tinypic.com/2ppcyde.jpg
Figure 10
#####
Southern Ocean (60S to 90S)
http://i41.tinypic.com/1429baf.jpg
Figure 11
NINO3.4
NINO3.4 (5S to 5N, 170W to 120W)
http://i43.tinypic.com/10fymwg.jpg
Figure 12
SOURCE
The ERSST.v3b data, both SST and SST anomalies, are available through the KNMI Climate Explorer webpage:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_obs.cgi?someone@somewhere
Bob Tisdale - Climate Observations 
