Hourly data are from national surface stations in China, including hourly observational values of such weather elements as temperature, pressure, relative humidity, moisture pressure, wind and precipitation.

The dataset includes the daily routine observations such as pressure, temperature, humidity, wind direction, wind speed, precipitation amounts at the synoptic hours from Chinese surface stations for global exchange acquired by the National Meteorological Information Centre (NMIC) through the domestic telecommunication system and those from foreign surface stations for global exchange acquired via GTS.