An improved land-ocean global monthly precipitation anomaly reconstruction is developed for the period beginning in 1900. Reconstructions use the available historical data and statistics developed from the modern satellite-sampled period to analyze variations over the historical pre-satellite period. This paper documents the latest in a series of precipitation reconstructions developed by the authors. Although the reconstruction principle is still the minimization of mean-squared error, this latest reconstruction includes the following three major improvements over previous reconstructions: (i) an improved method that first produces an annual first guess, which is then adjusted using a monthly increment analysis; (ii) improved use of oceanic observations in the annual first guess using a canonical correlation analysis; and (iii) reinjection of gauge data where those data are available. These improvements allow more confident analyses and evaluations of global precipitation variations over the reconstruction period.

(Abstract excerpted from Smith et al. 2012.)