DOI: 10.5285/5ba67d62cdc249a3bc5b1c38b339beb3
title: HadUK-Grid Gridded Climate Observations on a 5km grid over the UK, v1.3.0.ceda (1836-2023)

description: 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. The dataset at 5 km resolution is derived from the associated 1 km x 1 km resolution to allow for comparison to data from UKCP18 climate projections. The dataset spans the period from 1836 to 2023, 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This data set supersedes the previous versions of this dataset which also superseded UKCP09 gridded observations.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 v1.3.0.ceda HadUK-Grid datasets are as follows:
 
* Added data for calendar year 2023
 
* Added newly digitised data for daily rainfall (62 Scottish stations for 1945-1960)
 
* Daily rainfall data for Bolton, 1916-1919 have been corrected (previous values were corrupted and needed redigitising)
 
* Daily rainfall data for Buxton, 1960 have been corrected (conversion from inches to mm had been applied incorrectly)
 
* Rainfall data from EA and SEPA APIs are included for the last three months of the dataset (Oct-Dec 2023) (for all earlier months the rainfall data from partner agencies is obtained from the Met Office's MIDAS database)
 
* The number of stations used for groundfrost, sunshine and windspeed have reduced at different points in the historical series when comparing v1.3.0.ceda to the previous version v1.2.0.ceda. These reductions in station numbers have been caused by changes made in the data processing steps upstream of the gridding process.
 
* For groundfrost this reduction has been caused by an automated quality control process flagging the historical data which have been removed as suspect (mostly affecting data from 1961 to 1970).
 
* For sunshine the small reduction in the 1960s has been caused by the removal of digitized monthly sunshine data through this period where we wish to reverify the data source.
 
* For windspeed the reduction from 1969 to 2010 has been caused by changes to rules applied relating to data completeness when compiling daily mean windspeeds, which in turn have followed through to monthly statistics.
 
* We plan to carry out a review of the data which have been excluded from this version. Some of it may be reintroduced in a future release.
 
* Net changes to the input station data:
 
- Total of 126970983 observations
- 125384735 (98.75%) unchanged
- 28487 (0.02%) modified for this version
- 1557761 (1.23%) added in this version
- 188522 (0.15%) 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.