Met Office MIDAS Open: UK Land Surface Stations Data (1853-current)

MIDAS Open is the open data version of the Met Office Integrated Data Archive System (MIDAS) containing land surface station data starting from 1853 and ending at the of the previous complete year. This collection comprises of hourly and daily weather measurements and observations of parameters relating to temperature, rainfall, sunshine, radiation, wind and weather observations such as present weather codes, cloud cover, snow etc.

The collection contains land surface observations data from those stations where the data have been designated as public sector information. Prior to version v202407 this consisted of stations operated by the Met Office only, but from version v202407, daily and hourly rainfall observations from stations with gauges owned by the Environment Agency (EA), Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) and Natural Resources Wales (NRW) have also been included in the collection. Since then, stations owned by other third-party organisations where approval for inclusion has been reached have also been added to the product.

All of these data are provided under an Open Government Licence.

The current collection contains the following proportions of the fuller MIDAS dataset collection:

96% of daily temperature observations

96% of daily weather observations

92% of hourly weather observations

94% of daily rainfall observations

96% of hourly rainfall observations

98% of soil temperature observations

96% of solar radiation observations

93% of mean wind observations

Daily rainfall: Versions up until MIDAS Open v202407 only have about 13% coverage of observations. In version v202407, the coverage was increased to 58% with the inclusion of the third-party hydrological agency stations. In version v202507, the coverage was increased further to 94% with the inclusion of historic closed stations.

The fuller "Met Office Integrated Data Archive System (MIDAS) Land and Marine Surface Stations Data (1853-current)" collection is made available for academic use via the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis.

The MIDAS Open collection is updated annually in a delayed mode to ensure that data acquisition and quality control procedures have all been completed. Quality controlled (qc-version-1) and non-quality controlled (qc-version-0) data are available from 1853 where available, although this will vary by station depending on the operation period of the station. The collection includes stations which are currently operational as well as stations which were operational in the past and have since closed.

Each version of the dataset will include data up until the end of the previous complete year relative to the year in the version number of the dataset (e.g. v202407 included data up until the end of 2023).

Note: This collection does not supersede the full MIDAS collection which is also archived at CEDA.

Date (Publication): 2019-02-12T10:22:26

Date (Creation): 2019-02-12T10:22:26

Citation identifier: https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/dbd451271eb04662beade68da43546e1

Citation identifier: Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) / dbd451271eb04662beade68da43546e1

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
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
Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA)	support@ceda.ac.uk	Publisher

Maintenance and update frequency: Unknown

Update scope: Series

Keywords

MIDAS
Met Office
meteorology
UK
land
daily
hourly

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

atmospheric conditions

Access constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: All data within this dataset collection are available to any registered CEDA user.

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: 1853-01-01T00:00:00

End date: 2024-12-31T23:59:59

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/dbd451271eb04662beade68da43546e1	CEDA Data Catalogue Page

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://artefacts.ceda.ac.uk/badc_datadocs/surface/code.html	WMO Meteorological codes

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/assets/metofficegovuk/pdf/research/library-and-archive/library/publications/factsheets/factsheet_17-observations_over_land_2023.pdf	Weather observations over land (Factsheet 17)

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://help.ceda.ac.uk/article/4982-midas-open-user-guide	MIDAS Open User Guide

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://archive.ceda.ac.uk/tools/midas_stations	MIDAS Station Search

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7357335	Martyn, S. (2021). MIDAS Data User Guide for UK Land Observations, v20210705 (p. 70). Met Office. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7357335

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: dbd451271eb04662beade68da43546e1 XML

Metadata language: English

Character set: UTF8

Hierarchy level: Series

Hierarchy level name: series

Date stamp: 2025-08-04T02:28:36

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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