Monthly means of land and sea surface temperature (°C) from 1962 to 2019

We related the sea surface temperature data from the Helgoland Roads Time Series, one of the most important and detailed long-term in situ marine ecological time series, to the Sylt Roads Time Series and spatially averaged North Sea, Germany, Europe, North Atlantic and Northern Hemisphere surface temperatures. The hierarchical and comparative statistical evaluation of all of these time series relative to one another allows us to relate marine ecosystem change to temperature in terms of time (from 1962 to 2019) and spatial scales (global to local). The objectives are: 1.to investigate the warming in the North Sea in terms of different geographical scales and typical weather indices (North Atlantic Oscillation), 2.to document the different types of changes observed: trends, anomalies and variability 3.to differentiate seasonal shifts, 4.to evaluate anomalies and frequency distributions of temperature over time, and 5.to evaluate hot and cold spells and their variability. Spatially averaged datasets are extracted from gridded HadCRUT4 and HadSST3 reanalysis, the European Environment Agency and the German Weather Service (DWD). Datasets are analyzed in terms of yearly and monthly surface temperature averages and their anomalies relative to 1960s-1990s period. The North Atlantic Oscillation winter mean is the December, January and February average of the data made available by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). For detailed information about the datasets, please refer to Amorim & Wiltshire et al. (2023) - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pocean.2023.103080.