MIDAS: Global Marine Meteorological Observations Data

The global marine meteorological observations data contains marine meteorological values, such as wave heights and periods, wind speed and direction, present weather, and air and sea temperature, measured during the hour ending at the stated date and time. The data is collected by worldwide observation stations and transmitted within the following message types: Ship SYNOP, which is also referred to as FM 13-IX SHIP, FM 18-X BUOY, Light Vessel, Marid, Marine logbooks, NAVY, OWS, PLAT/RIG, and VOF. In this dataset the different message types are all described by the SHIP message name. Data are available from 1854 to present.

The data consist of:

Offshore wind (speed and direction)

Weather (present, past)

Cloud (amount, type, base amount, base height)

Pressure (mean sea level)

Visibility

Temperature (air, dew-point, wetbulb, sea)

Relative humidity

Wave (direction, period, height)

Wind-wave (period, height)

Swell (direction, -wave period, height)

Ship direction and distance

Maximum gust speed and period

The wind speed is given to the nearest knot, direction to the nearest 10 degrees, and the time of the maximum gust is given to the nearest 0.1 hour. The wind direction from which the wind blows, is measured in Degrees (true). The entry for an east wind is 090, for a south wind it is 180 and so on clockwise. Note that zero values in both wind speed and wind direction fields indicate that there was no wind blowing at the time of observation.

The temperature and dew point are given to the nearest 0.1 degree Celsius, the pressure is given to the nearest 0.1 hectopascal, the cloud base height and the visibility are given to the nearest decametre. Cloud amount is reported in oktas.

The past weather is recorded as a number between 0-9 which details what the weather has been like in the last 6 hours for observations at 00, 06, 12, 1800 UTC, the last 3 hours for observations at 03, 09, 15, 2100 UTC and the previous hour at any other times. The past weather is only recorded when a manual observation is done at the station.

Marine reports are defined by position (latitude and longitude) and by time. Duplicates can exist at a specified position and time, e.g. when ships are alongside for bunkering, so the identifier of the ship or buoy is part of the primary key of the entity.

A great many ships do not include a valid call sign in their reports; the call sign may be missing or invalid. When this occurs, Midas will substitute the call sign value “SHIP”.

Date (Publication): 2006-08-07T14:58:31

Date (Creation): 2006-08-07T14:58:31

Citation identifier: https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/77910bcec71c820d4c92f40d3ed3f249

Citation identifier: NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC) / 77910bcec71c820d4c92f40d3ed3f249

Point of contact

Organisation name	Electronic mail address	Role
Met Office	enquiries@metoffice.gov.uk	Author
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)	badc@rl.ac.uk	Custodian
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)	badc@rl.ac.uk	Distributor
Met Office	enquiries@metoffice.gov.uk	Principal investigator
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)	badc@rl.ac.uk	pointofContact
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)	badc@rl.ac.uk	Publisher

Maintenance and update frequency: Monthly

Update scope: Dataset

Keywords

Met Office
MIDAS
Marine Observations
wave height
PRECIPITATION
ATMOSPHERE
ATMOSPHERICPHENOMENA
SNOW
ATMOSPHERICRADIATION

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

atmospheric conditions

Access constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: These data have multiple licences for different applications. Always make sure to read the appropriate licence for full data usage limitations details. Other usage may not be permitted. Restricted data: please submit an application using the REQUEST ACCESS link for access.

Use constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: Under the following licence https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/licences/specific_licences/ukmo_agreement.pdf, appropriate use of these data may fall under academic 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.

Other constraints: Under the following licence https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/licences/specific_licences/ukmo_agreement_gov.pdf, appropriate use of these data may fall under policy 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: 1854-01-01T00:00:00

Unique resource identifier: WGS 84

Distribution format

Name	Version
Data are ASCII formatted

Distributor contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)		badc@rl.ac.uk	Distributor

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/77910bcec71c820d4c92f40d3ed3f249	CEDA Data Catalogue Page

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	http://data.ceda.ac.uk/badc/ukmo-midas/data/MO	DOWNLOAD

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/marine/observations/gathering_data/MAWS.html	Met Office - Marine Automatic Weather Station (MAWS) network doceumentation

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/badc_datadocs/ukmo-midas/Headers/MO_Column_Headers.txt	Link to column headings in comma separated text file

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/badc_datadocs/ukmo-midas/Headers/MO_Column_Headers.xlsx	Link to column headings in Excel file

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://zenodo.org/record/7357325	MIDAS User Guide version v20200921

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/badc_datadocs/ukmo-midas/ukmo_guide.html#6.2	Information on versioning in MIDAS data

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/badc_datadocs/ukmo-midas/MO_Table.html	BADC Doc: Global Marine Observations (MO) Table details

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://zenodo.org/record/7356545	Copy of Met Office Hadley Centre report on the "Digitization of Metform data and Conversion to Flatfile Integer Format"

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7357248	Met Office MIDAS Quick User Guide

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 collated by the Met Office and archived in the Met Office's MIDAS database. Data are extracted from a sub-set of available tables and delivered to BADC approximately on a monthly basis as flat files.

Metadata

File identifier: 77910bcec71c820d4c92f40d3ed3f249 XML

Metadata language: English

Character set: UTF8

Parent identifier: Met Office Integrated Data Archive System (MIDAS) Land and Marine Surface Stations Data (1853-current)
220a65615218d5c9cc9e4785a3234bd0

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Date stamp: 2026-03-04T03:00:31

Metadata standard name: UK GEMINI

Metadata standard version: 2.3

Metadata author

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)		badc@rl.ac.uk	Point of contact

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