Land-based compilations of gridded monthly surface air temperature anomalies, averaged into hemispheric values for the last 140 years, have been available for climatological analyses for the last 10 years or so. The analysis techniques used in their construction, particularly the need for a common reference period, mean that it is difficult to include, retrospectively, any of the new temperature datasets now available for some countries. So, despite data availability improvements in some areas, the number of stations used has fallen since 1970, both in the hemispheric averages and in their constituent grid-box datasets. The present study is a reanalysis of both the existing and the newly available temperature datasets to produce a grid-box dataset of 5°×5° temperature anomalies. The reanalysis not only uses over 1000 more stations (2961 in total), principally covering the period from the 1920s to about 1990, but also arrests the decline of stations incorporated in real time for the latest years. ... Abstract Land-based compilations of gridded monthly surface air temperature anomalies, averaged into hemispheric values for the last 140 years, have been available for climatological analyses for the last 10 years or so. The analysis techniques used in their construction, particularly the need for a common reference period, mean that it is difficult to include, retrospectively, any of the new temperature datasets now available for some countries. So, despite data availability improvements in some areas, the number of stations used has fallen since 1970, both in the hemispheric averages and in their constituent grid-box datasets. The present study is a reanalysis of both the existing and the newly available temperature datasets to produce a grid-box dataset of 5°×5° temperature anomalies. The reanalysis not only uses over 1000 more stations (2961 in total), principally covering the period from the 1920s to about 1990, but also arrests the decline of stations incorporated in real time for the latest years. ...