This data set is a subset of the global mean monthly climatology (Cramer and Leemans 1999) for the Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA) in South America (i.e., longitude 85 deg to 30 deg W, latitude 25 deg S to 10 deg N). The data are available in ASCII grid and binary image formats.The parent database is a major update of the Leemans and Cramer database (Leemans and Cramer 1991). It contains long-term monthly averages, for the period 1931-1960, 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 larger database, using the partial thin-plate splining algorithm developed by Michael F. Hutchinson, Canberra (Hutchinson and Bischof 1983). The current version is 2.1--this is the same version that is currently used widely around the globe, notably by all groups participating in the IGBP NPP model intercomparison.More information can be found at: ftp://daac.ornl.gov/data/lba/physical_climate/leemans_cramer/comp/README.