There are 264 ASCII files -- July 1975 to February 1998 with two four month gaps.
The gaps are July to October 1978 and August to November 1993.
The files contain monthly mean OLR for 25N to 25S with 5 degree resolution. There are 10 rows by 72 columns. The first value on the first row is monthly mean OLR for the 5 degree box bounded by 25N, 20N, 0E and 5E. The second value on the first row is for the 5 degree box immediately to the east of the one represented by the first value, and so on. The second row is for the latitude band 20N to 15N, and so on.
Each element is a real number and has 10 characters, two after the decimal. So the fortran format code for each line is 72f10.2.
The naming convention for each file: oyymm__?.dat
o= OLR
yy= year
mm= month
?= 6 for Nimbus 6, 7 for Nimbus 7 and e for ERBS.
The Nimbus 6 files have a " c " after mm which means the data in those
files have been corrected for a bias between Nimbus 6 data and the rest of
the record.
The dataset files can be found here
For more information on the data, see
Christopher C. Collimore, David W. Martin, Matthew H. Hitchman, Amihan Huesmann and Duane E. Waliser, 2003: On The Relationship Between The QBO and Tropical Deep Convection. J. of Climate.
Christopher Collimore
Dept. of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
U. of Wisconsin - Madison
1225 W. Dayton St.
Madison, WI 53706
608-262-2828