This database is a major update of the Leemans and Cramer database (Leemans and Cramer 1991). It currently contains monthly averages of mean temperature, temperature range, precipitation, rain days and sunshine hours for the terrestrial surface of the globe, gridded at 0.5 degree longitude/latitude resolution. It was generated from a large data base, using the partial thin-plate splining algorithm developed by Michael F. Hutchinson, Canberra (Hutchinson and Bischof 1983).