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This paper examines the performance of three climate re-analysis datasets in Angola, namely the ERA-40, NCEP-r1 and JRA-55, by comparing annual and seasonal estimates of precipitation, surface air temperature and evaporation with ground observation measurements. The observational dataset describes a region poorly covered by international climate databases and it is believed that most of its data have not been used in the data assimilation procedures of the climate models. This paper therefore provides a fresh look at the performance of these climate re-analysis datasets in a vast area where distance and civil war have hindered ground monitoring efforts. The re-analysis exercises offer better temperature estimates than precipitation estimates. When offered, the evaporation estimates from all three products are very poor. The three products are able to describe the main features of the spatial distribution of average annual precipitation and temperature, but struggle to reproduce the temporal changes of these variables. The results from a set of performance criteria show that the correlation between the observed ground measurements and re-analysis estimates is poor overall and the NSE values indicate that the average measured value at each location is usually a better estimate than the re-analysis estimate.EDITOR A. CastellarinASSOCIATE EDITOR S. Kanae [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]