Met Office Rain Radar Data from the NIMROD System

A collection of products from rain radars operated by the Met Office and other European agencies for the UK and Europe. This collection includes rain composite plots and data for the UK and Europe, plus single site radar data including rain rate data, single and dual-polar data products.

These were produced by the Met Office's Nimrod system. Nimrod is a fully automated system for weather analysis and nowcasting based around a network of C-band rainfall radars. This dataset has the fine-resolution analyses of rain rate for the UK and Europe.

The UK has a network of C-band rainfall radars and data form these are processed by the Met Office NIMROD system. Four or five radar scans at different elevations at each site are processed to give the best possible estimate of rainfall at the ground. The main quality checking method is routine evaluation using rain gauges as ground truth.

The BADC holds the analyses of rainfall rate at a time resolution of 5 or 15 minutes. Data are available from late 2002. Images are available for the UK as well as a further image including neighbouring European countries from 1999. Data files are available on a 1 km and 5 km Cartesian grid. Single radar site data are available for 2 and 5 km Cartesian grids for various UK radar sites.

The value of radar-based data from the Nimrod system has been highlighted repeatedly. For example, in two severe flooding events during 1998 (at Easter over the Midlands and in late October over Wales), estimates of surface rainfall derived from radar data provided evidence of the extent and severity of the rainfall events. The 2 km data files reach to 100 km from the radar, the 5km files to 250 km.

Detailed radar site location are given in the Met Office Weather Radar Factsheet.

Time resolution is 5 or 15 minutes depending on the product.

Various scripts have been made available under the software directory to aid use of these data, including within GIS applications.

Date (Publication): 2003-12-10T02:44:56

Date (Creation): 2003-12-10T02:44:56

Citation identifier: https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/82adec1f896af6169112d09cc1174499

Citation identifier: NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC) / 82adec1f896af6169112d09cc1174499

Point of contact

Organisation name	Electronic mail address	Role
Met Office	enquiries@metoffice.gov.uk	Author
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)	support@ceda.ac.uk	Custodian
Met Office	enquiries@metoffice.gov.uk	Owner
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)	support@ceda.ac.uk	Distributor
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)	support@ceda.ac.uk	pointofContact
Met Office	enquiries@metoffice.gov.uk	pointofContact
NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (NCAS BADC)	badc@rl.ac.uk	Publisher

Maintenance and update frequency: Unknown

Update scope: Series

Keywords

Met Office
NIMROD
rain radar
c-band
rain rate

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

atmospheric conditions

Access constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: Please contact the data centre for assistance on accessing data from this dataset collection.

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.

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: 1999-06-07T00:00:00

Unique resource identifier: WGS 84

Distribution format

Name	Version
Contact data centre for format details.

Distributor contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)		support@ceda.ac.uk	Distributor

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/82adec1f896af6169112d09cc1174499	CEDA Data Catalogue Page

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	http://data.ceda.ac.uk/badc/ukmo-nimrod/doc	NIMROD Document directory

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/badc_datadocs/nimrod/factsheet15.pdf	Met Office Weather Radar Fact Sheet

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/badc_datadocs/nimrod/calendar.html	BADC Doc: NIMROD data availability

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	http://data.ceda.ac.uk/badc/ukmo-nimrod/doc/Polar_File_Format.doc	NIMROD Polar format documentation

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	http://data.ceda.ac.uk/badc/ukmo-nimrod/doc/nimrod_radar_processing.pdf	Improving precipitation estimates from weather radar using quality control and correction techniques. D L Harrison, S J Driscoll & M Kitchen.

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	http://data.ceda.ac.uk/badc/ukmo-nimrod/software	NIMROD software directory

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://zenodo.org/record/7356941	Dual Polar file format header description

Hierarchy level: Series

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: Please see data lineage statements for each dataset within this collection for data lineage details.

Metadata

File identifier: 82adec1f896af6169112d09cc1174499 XML

Metadata language: English

Character set: UTF8

Hierarchy level: Series

Hierarchy level name: series

Date stamp: 2025-06-10T02:26:39

Metadata standard name: UK GEMINI

Metadata standard version: 2.3

Metadata author

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

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