DSS presents the FNL (Final) Global Analyses on a pair of 2.5x2.5 degree hemispheric grids every twelve hours. These were operationally prepared by NCEP. These were operationally prepared by NCEP. The NCEP documents About the Global Parallel System and EMC Model Documentation describe the model.

The analyses are available on the surface, 16 mandatory levels from 1000mb to 10mb, boundary layer and some sigma layers, tropopause, and a few others. Parameters include surface pressure, sea level pressure, geopotential height, temperature, sea surface temperature, soil temperature, water content of soil, ice cover, water equivalent of snow depth, relative humidity, specific humidity, u- and v-wind components, vertical motion, vorticity, precipitable water, minimum temperature, maximum temperature and land-sea mask

This dataset is in GRIB format. This is a popular dataset with MM5, WRF and RAMS users - see this. The dataset is free, through the DS083.0 data page. MORE