Data

Northern Hemisphere Atmospheric River Database

We openly share a long-term, high-resolution catalog of atmospheric rivers (ARs) over the Northern Hemisphere, identified with the Pan–Lu algorithm. The database provides 6-hourly AR fields on a 1°×1° grid spanning 1950–2022. Each time step is stored as a binary (0/1) field in NetCDF, where 1 indicates an AR is present at that grid cell and 0 indicates absence. This format makes it straightforward to compute AR frequency, long-term trends, landfall statistics, and composites. The database was released together with our npj Climate and Atmospheric Science (2025) paper on contrasting historical AR trends across the Northern Hemisphere.

Coverage: Northern Hemisphere
Period: 1950–2022
Spatial resolution: 1° × 1°
Temporal resolution: 6-hourly
Format: NetCDF, binary AR mask (1 = AR present, 0 = absent)
Method: Pan–Lu atmospheric river identification algorithm

Download on GitHub Read the paper

How to cite

If you use this database, please cite:

Pan, M., Hu, S., Zaitchik, B.F. & Pan, W.K. (2025). Contrasting historical trends of atmospheric rivers in the Northern Hemisphere. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 8, 307. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-025-01191-w

Related references

Pan, M. & Lu, M. (2019). A novel atmospheric river identification algorithm. Water Resources Research, 55, 6069–6087. [Link]
Pan, M. & Lu, M. (2020). East Asia atmospheric river catalog: annual cycle, transition mechanism, and precipitation. Geophysical Research Letters, 47(15), e2020GL089477. [Link]
Pan, M., Lu, M. & Lall, U. (2024). Diversity of cross-Pacific atmospheric river main routes. Communications Earth & Environment, 5, 378. [Link]