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ClimateSA: historical and projected climate data for South America

On this page you can download the ClimateSA software and approximately 3,000 climate grids at 30 arcsec (~1 km) and 2.5 arcmin (5 km) resolution for historical climate (1901-2020) in monthly, annual, decadal, and 30-year steps and projected future climate (2020s, 2050s, 2080s) based on CMIP6 multi-model projections.

The database includes monthly base variables (Tmin, Tmax, Tave & Prec) as well as economically or biologically relevant (bioclim) variables such as growing and chilling degree days, heating and cooling degree days, Hargrave's climate moisture deficit and reference evaporation, and seasonal variables.

The climate grids were developed with a deep neural network that uses geographic and atmospheric information to model local weather patterns at medium resolution (e.g. see examples below, with the inset showing temperature inversions on high plateaus, and precipitation induced by orographic lift on the windward side, and rain shadows on the leeward side of major mountain ranges).

Subsequently, the ClimateSA software downscales the grids to higher resolutions with a digital elevation model in conjunction with local environmental lapse-rates. The software can also provide scale-free point estimates of climate variables for user-provided latitude, longitude and elevation coordinates.

Data downloads at 30 arcsec (~1 km) and 1 arcmin (~2 km) resolution are available from the tables below, but you may also visually explore some sample grids: click on a thumbnails below and then zoom in or out of different areas ( Zoom tool ), or view the RGB-GeoTIFFs in GIS.

Mean Annual Precipitation (View, GIS) Precipitation Dec-Jan-Feb (View, GIS) Precipitation Jun-Jul-Aug (View, GIS) Climate Moisture Deficit (View, GIS)
MAP PrecDJF PrecDJF CMD
Mean Annual Temperature (View, GIS) MWMT-MCMT Difference (View, GIS) Mean Coldest Month Temp (View, GIS) Reference Elevation Grid (View, GIS)
MAT MCMT MCMT Elev

 


ClimateSA software download and references
 

This program does not require installation. Download, unzip, and double click the executable file ClimateSA.exe. The program should run on all versions of Windows. If you receive the error message "COMCTL32.OCX missing", you have to install these libraryfiles. The program also runs on Linux, Unix and Mac systems with the free software Wine or MacPorts/Wine).

Picture
ClimateSA v1.99 (2025-12-11) - includes AR6/CMIP6 projections and CRU 4.05 historical data from 1901 to 2020.

Note that the ClimateSA package and the grids downloadable below are not yet 100% finalized and have not undergone peer-review in a journal yet. They should still be better for research usage than anything else (we think), but we will release a version 2.00 with some small improvements and corrections early January 2026. In the interim, reference like this: "Climate data has been generated with the ClimateSA v1.99 software package, available at http://tinyurl.com/ClimateSA, based on methodology described by Namiiro et al. (2025) and Mahoney et al. (2022)."

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Namiiro, S., Hamann, A., Wang, T., Castellanos-Acuña, D. and Mahony, C.R., C. 2025. A high-resolution database of historical and future climate for Africa developed with deep neural networks. Scientific Data 11: 1278, doi: 10.1038/s41597-025-05575-8.
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Mahoney, C.R., Wang, T., Hamann, A., Cannon, A.J. 2022. A CMIP6 ensemble for downscaled monthly climate normals over North America. International Journal of Climatology 42: 5871-5891.

 
Video tutorials
 

Get started with these two video-tutorials. This first video (6 min for the ClimateAF package) introduces the data and methods and demonstrates the main functionality of the software. The second video (30 min, for the ClimateEU package) explains in detail how to generate gridded data.

Tutorial 1: Learn the basic operation of the software Tutorial 2: Learn how to mass-produce continental climate grids in a projection of your choice

 

Gridded data at 1 arcminute (~2 km) & 30 arcsecond (~1km) resolution

This dataset was created with the ClimateSA v2.20 software package for historical and projected 30-year normal periods. To generate additional projections for individual GCMs, you can use the "ClimateSA input file" with the "Grid generator R code", included in the help file below. The download packages of historical and projected climate data contain geoTIFF files compatible with most GIS applications in the standard WGS84 geographic (= EPSG:4326) projection. See the help file for further details and explanations:

1 arcmin (~2km) resolution download:

Help file
ClimateSA input file
Elevation, ID reference
Area covered
Usage, variables, grid generator: CSV format 1 arcmin CSV: CSV format 1 arcmin geoTIFF: ASCII format Shapefile: ASCII format

1 arcmin Historical 30-year climate normal periods
1940s (1931-1960) Bioclim: CSV format, Monthly: CSV format 1950s (1941-1970) Bioclim: CSV format, Monthly: CSV format 1960s (1951-1980) Bioclim: CSV format, Monthly: CSV format
1970s (1961-1990) Bioclim: CSV format, Monthly: CSV format 1980s (1971-2000) Bioclim: CSV format, Monthly: CSV format 1990s (1981-2010) Bioclim: CSV format, Monthly: CSV format
2000s (1991-2020) Bioclim: CSV format, Monthly: CSV format (as a representation of current climate use the SSP2-2020s* projection below)

Average ensemble scenarios1
27 Bioclimatic variables
48 Monthly variables
SSP1 (+2.6 W/m2) - Sustainability focus2 2020s3: CSV format, 2050s: ASCII format, 2080s: ASCII format 2020s: CSV format, 2050s: ASCII format, 2080s: ASCII format
SSP2 (+4.5 W/m2) - Middle of the road 2020s*: CSV format, 2050s: ASCII format, 2080s: ASCII format 2020s*: CSV format, 2050s: ASCII format, 2080s: ASCII format
SSP3 (+7.0 W/m2) - Regional rivalry 2020s: CSV format, 2050s: ASCII format, 2080s: ASCII format 2020s: CSV format, 2050s: ASCII format, 2080s: ASCII format
SSP5 (+8.5 W/m2) - Fossil-fuel focus 2020s: CSV format, 2050s: ASCII format, 2080s: ASCII format 2020s: CSV format, 2050s: ASCII format, 2080s: ASCII format
   1) The ensemble projections are averages across 8 CMIP6 models (ACC, CNRM, EC, GFDL, GISS, MIR, MPI and MRI) that were chosen
     based on a variety of quality criteria and representativeness. For details on GCM selection, see Mahoney et al. (2022).
   2) Average projected global warming by the 2080s for different Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) scenarios:
       SSP1-2.6: 1.5-2.0°C; SSP2-4.5: 2.5-3.0°C; SSP3-7.0: 3.5-4.0°C; SSP5-5.8: 4.0-5.0°C.
   3) Projections for 30-year normal periods: 2020s: 2011-2040, 2050s: 2041-2070, 2080s: 2071-2100.
    *) SSP2-2020s is a good choice to represent current climate (midpoint of "middle of the road" climate normal estimate).

 

30 arcsec (~1km) resolution download:

Help file
ClimateSA input file
Elevation, ID reference
Area covered
Usage, variables, grid generator: CSV format 30 arcsec CSV: CSV format 30 arcsec geoTIFF: ASCII format Shapefile: ASCII format

30 arcsec Historical 30-year climate normal periods
1940s (1931-1960) Bioclim: CSV format, Monthly: CSV format 1950s (1941-1970) Bioclim: CSV format, Monthly: CSV format 1960s (1951-1980) Bioclim: CSV format, Monthly: CSV format
1970s (1961-1990) Bioclim: CSV format, Monthly: CSV format 1980s (1971-2000) Bioclim: CSV format, Monthly: CSV format 1990s (1981-2010) Bioclim: CSV format, Monthly: CSV format
2000s (1991-2020) Bioclim: CSV format, Monthly: CSV format (as a representation of current climate use the SSP2-2020s* projection below)

Average ensemble scenarios1
27 Bioclimatic variables
48 Monthly variables
SSP1 (+2.6 W/m2) - Sustainability focus2 2020s3: CSV format, 2050s: ASCII format, 2080s: ASCII format 2020s: CSV format, 2050s: ASCII format, 2080s: ASCII format
SSP2 (+4.5 W/m2) - Middle of the road 2020s*: CSV format, 2050s: ASCII format, 2080s: ASCII format 2020s*: CSV format, 2050s: ASCII format, 2080s: ASCII format
SSP3 (+7.0 W/m2) - Regional rivalry 2020s: CSV format, 2050s: ASCII format, 2080s: ASCII format 2020s: CSV format, 2050s: ASCII format, 2080s: ASCII format
SSP5 (+8.5 W/m2) - Fossil-fuel focus 2020s: CSV format, 2050s: ASCII format, 2080s: ASCII format 2020s: CSV format, 2050s: ASCII format, 2080s: ASCII format
   For notes, see table above.