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Dataset

 

MIDAS Open: UK hourly solar radiation data, v202407

Update Frequency: Not Planned
Status: Completed
Online Status: ONLINE
Publication State: Citable
Publication Date: 2024-08-06
DOI Publication Date: 2024-08-06
Download Stats: last 12 months
Dataset Size: 5.77K Files | 3GB

Abstract

The UK hourly solar radiation data contain the amount of solar irradiance received during the hour ending at the specified time. All sites report 'global' radiation amounts. This is also known as 'total sky radiation' as it includes both direct solar irradiance and 'diffuse' irradiance as a result of light scattering. Some sites also provide separate diffuse and direct irradiation amounts, depending on the instrumentation at the site. For these the sun's path is tracked with two pyrometers - one where the path to the sun is blocked by a suitable disc to allow the scattered sunlight to be measured to give the diffuse measurement, while the other has a tube pointing at the sun to measure direct solar irradiance whilst blanking out scattered sun light.

For details about the different measurements made and the limited number of sites making them please see the MIDAS Solar Irradiance table linked to in the online resources section of this record.

This version supersedes the previous version of this dataset and a change log is available in the archive, and in the linked documentation for this record, detailing the differences between this version and the previous version. The change logs detail new, replaced and removed data. These include the addition of data for calendar year 2023.

The data were collected by observation stations operated by the Met Office across the UK and transmitted within the following message types: SYNOP, HCM, AWSHRLY, MODLERAD, ESAWRADT and DRADR35 messages. The data spans from 1947 to 2023.

This dataset is part of the Midas-open dataset collection made available by the Met Office under the UK Open Government Licence, containing only UK mainland land surface observations owned or operated by the Met Office. It is a subset of the fuller, restricted Met Office Integrated Data Archive System (MIDAS) Land and Marine Surface Stations dataset, also available through the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis - see the related dataset section on this record.

Citable as:  Met Office (2024): MIDAS Open: UK hourly solar radiation data, v202407. NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis, 06 August 2024. doi:10.5285/0afba628c2f4462da68b0a81ebf1ff4c. https://dx.doi.org/10.5285/0afba628c2f4462da68b0a81ebf1ff4c
Abbreviation: Not defined
Keywords: Met Office, MIDAS, UK, meteorology, solar irradiance, hourly, global, diffuse, direct

Details

Previous Info:
No news update for this record
Previously used record identifiers:
No related previous identifiers.
Access rules:
Access to these data is available to any registered CEDA user. Please Login or Register for a CEDA account to gain access.
Use of these data is covered by the following licence(s):
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
When using these data you must cite them correctly using the citation given on the CEDA Data Catalogue record.
Data lineage:

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 Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) approximately on a yearly basis.

Data Quality:
Data undergo quality checking by the Met Office. State of the data in the quality control process and level of data quality are indicated using version numbers and quality control flagging with the data. See documentation about how to use the quality control flagging and version numbers. There are also some known data from commissioning trials in the data, which are given a src_id of 99999. These should be ignored by the user.
File Format:
Data are BADC-CSV formatted.

No variables found.

Coverage
Temporal Range
Start time:
1947-01-01T00:00:00
End time:
2023-12-31T23:59:59
Geographic Extent

 
60.8562°
 
-8.5636°
 
1.7400°
 
49.9140°
 
Related parties
Authors (1)
Funders (1)
Principal Investigators (1)