HadUK-Grid Climate Observations by UK countries, v1.1.0.0 (1836-2021)

HadUK-Grid is a collection of gridded climate variables derived from the network of UK land surface observations. The data have been interpolated from meteorological station data onto a uniform grid to provide complete and consistent coverage across the UK. These data at 1 km resolution have been averaged across a set of discrete geographies defining UK countries consistent with data from UKCP18 climate projections. The dataset spans the period from 1836 to 2021, but the start time is dependent on climate variable and temporal resolution.

The gridded data are produced for daily, monthly, seasonal and annual timescales, as well as long term averages for a set of climatological reference periods. Variables include air temperature (maximum, minimum and mean), precipitation, sunshine, mean sea level pressure, wind speed, relative humidity, vapour pressure, days of snow lying, and days of ground frost.

This data set supersedes the previous versions of this dataset which also superseded UKCP09 gridded observations. Subsequent versions may be released in due course and will follow the version numbering as outlined by Hollis et al. (2018, see linked documentation).

The changes for v1.1.0.0 HadUK-Grid datasets are as follows:

* The addition of data for calendar year 2021

* The addition of 30 year averages for the new reference period 1991-2020

* An update to 30 year averages for 1961-1990 and 1981-2010. This is an order of operation change. In this version 30 year averages have been calculated from the underlying monthly/seasonal/annual grids (grid-then-average) in previous version they were grids of interpolated station average (average-then-grid). This order of operation change results in small differences to the values, but provides improved consistency with the monthly/seasonal/annual series grids. However this order of operation change means that 1961-1990 averages are not included for sfcWind or snowlying variables due to the start date for these variables being 1969 and 1971 respectively.

* A substantial new collection of monthly rainfall data have been added for the period before 1960. These data originate from the rainfall rescue project (Hawkins et al. 2022) and this source now accounts for 84% of pre-1960 monthly rainfall data, and the monthly rainfall series has been extended back to 1836.

Net changes to the input station data used to generate this dataset:

-Total of 122664065 observations

-118464870 (96.5%) unchanged

-4821 (0.004%) modified for this version

-4194374 (3.4%) added in this version

-5887 (0.005%) deleted from this version

The primary purpose of these data are to facilitate monitoring of UK climate and research into climate change, impacts and adaptation. The datasets have been created by the Met Office with financial support from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) in order to support the Public Weather Service Customer Group (PWSCG), the Hadley Centre Climate Programme, and the UK Climate Projections (UKCP18) project. The output from a number of data recovery activities relating to 19th and early 20th Century data have been used in the creation of this dataset, these activities were supported by: the Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme; the Natural Environment Research Council project "Analysis of historic drought and water scarcity in the UK"; the UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) Strategic Priorities Fund UK Climate Resilience programme; The UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Public Engagement programme; the National Centre for Atmospheric Science; National Centre for Atmospheric Science and the NERC GloSAT project; and the contribution of many thousands of public volunteers. The dataset is provided under Open Government Licence.

Date (Publication): 2022-05-26T08:53:40

Date (Creation): 2022-05-26T08:53:40

Citation identifier: https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/59a7cd0dcd474f5f906ead4073a9be8b

Citation identifier: NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis / 59a7cd0dcd474f5f906ead4073a9be8b

Citation identifier: doi / 10.5285/59a7cd0dcd474f5f906ead4073a9be8b

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
Met Office		enquiries@metoffice.gov.uk	Author
Unavailable	Hollis, Dan	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	McCarthy, Mark	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Kendon, Michael	Unavailable	Author
Unavailable	Legg, Tim	Unavailable	Author
NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis		support@ceda.ac.uk	Custodian
NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis		support@ceda.ac.uk	Distributor
NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis		support@ceda.ac.uk	pointofContact
Met Office		enquiries@metoffice.gov.uk	pointofContact
NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis		support@ceda.ac.uk	Publisher

Maintenance and update frequency: Not planned

Update scope: Dataset

Keywords

Met Office
UKCP18
BEIS
Defra
land surface
climate observations
hadobs

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

atmospheric conditions

Access constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: Access to these data is available to any registered CEDA user. Please Login or Register for a CEDA account to gain access.

Use constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: Under the following licence http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/, appropriate use of these data may fall under any use. This message is intended as guidance, always read the full licence. When using these data you must cite them correctly using the citation given on the CEDA Data Catalogue record.

Spatial representation type: Grid

Language: English

Topic category

Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere

Begin date: 1836-01-01T00:00:00

End date: 2021-12-31T23:59:59

Unique resource identifier: WGS 84

Distribution format

Name	Version
Data are NetCDF formatted.

Distributor contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis		support@ceda.ac.uk	Distributor

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/59a7cd0dcd474f5f906ead4073a9be8b	CEDA Data Catalogue Page

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	http://data.ceda.ac.uk/badc/ukmo-hadobs/data/insitu/MOHC/HadOBS/HadUK-Grid/v1.1.0.0/country	DOWNLOAD

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/data/haduk-grid/haduk-grid	Met Office documentation on HadUK-Grid data

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://doi.org/10.1002/gdj3.78	Hollis, D, McCarthy, MP, Kendon, M, Legg, T, Simpson, I. HadUK‐Grid—A new UK dataset of gridded climate observations. Geosci Data J. 2019; 00: 1– 9. https://doi.org/10.1002/gdj3.78

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	http://dap.ceda.ac.uk/badc/ukmo-hadobs/data/insitu/MOHC/HadOBS/HadUK-Grid/v1.1.0.0/HadUK-Grid_change_log_summary.txt	HadUK-Grid Summary Change Log (upto version v1.1.0.0) detailing changes to available data and processing

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	http://dap.ceda.ac.uk/badc/ukmo-hadobs/data/insitu/MOHC/HadOBS/HadUK-Grid/v1.1.0.0/HadUK-Grid_v1.1.0.0_change_log.txt	HadUK-Grid v1.1.0.0 change log - new file lists of new files and file number totals for deleted, changed and adjusted files

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gdj3.157	Hawkins et al. (2022): Millions of historical monthly rainfall observations taken in the UK and Ireland rescued by citizen scientists. Geoscience Data Journal. Article DOI: 10.1002/gdj3.157

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Conformance result

Title: Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

Date (Publication): 2010-12-08

Statement: Data provided by the UK Met Office for archiving in the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) archives.

Metadata

File identifier: 59a7cd0dcd474f5f906ead4073a9be8b XML

Metadata language: English

Character set: UTF8

Parent identifier: HadUK-Grid gridded and regional average climate observations for the UK
4dc8450d889a491ebb20e724debe2dfb

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Date stamp: 2025-12-10T03:25:06

Metadata standard name: UK GEMINI

Metadata standard version: 2.3

Metadata author

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis		support@ceda.ac.uk	Point of contact

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