Met Office Land Surface data file formats

PLEASE NOTE: The information provided below solely refers to the Met Office Land Surface data (1900-2000) dataset which has been superseded by the Met Office MIDAS dataset (1853-present) at the BADC.

• STATION_NAME is the complete station name.
  
• YEAR is the year expressed in full, ie 1998.
  
• Description of the message types (MESSAGE_TYPE) is available.
  
• FILE_EXTENSION indicates the type of data a file contains.
  To each file extension corresponds a different file format as follows:
  • dwx file format for daily weather measurements (sunshine amount, state of concrete slab, snow lying on the ground, snow depth, fresh snow amount, day of snow, hail, thunder and gale).
    
  • temp file format for daily temperature extreme measurements (maximum and minimum air temperatures, minimum grass temperature and minimum concrete temperature).
    
  • drain file format for daily rain measurements (precipitation amount only).
    
  • tsoil file format for daily soil temperature measurements (between depths from 5 to 100cm).
    
  • hwx file format for hourly weather measurements(10 minute wind speed and direction, present and past weather, cloud amount, type and base, visibility, MSL pressure, dry-bulb temperature, wet-bulb temperature, dew-point temperature, state of ground and 10 minute maximum gust speed).
    
  • radt file format for hourly and daily radiation measurements (global, diffuse and direct solar radiation)
    
  • hsun file format for hourly sunshine measurements.
    
  • wind file format for hourly mean wind measurements (mean wind direction and speed, max gust direction and speed and time of maximum gust).
    
  • hrain file format for hourly rain measurements (precipitation amount and duration).

oxford1999.dly3208.drain contains daily rain measurements for Oxford station 
for the year 1999 as recorded using the dly3208 report.

oxford1999.wahrain.hrain contains hourly rain measurements for Oxford station 
for the year 1999 as recorded using the wahrain report.

oxford1999.dly3208.hwx contains hourly weather measurements for Oxford station 
for the year 1999 as recorded using the dly3208 report. 

oxford1999.hsun3445.hsun contains hourly sunshine measurements for Oxford station 
for the year 1999 as recorded using the hsun3445 report.

oxford1999.hwnd6910.wind contains wind measurements for Oxford station 
for the year 1999 as recorded using the hwnd6910 report.