Version: 1.0 | Published: 8 May 2026 | Updated: 7 days ago
Precipitation per LAD in 2018
Dataset
Summary
Description:
This dataset provides comprehensive precipitation indicators aggregated to Local Authority District geographies for the United Kingdom for 2018. The data is created from the HadUK-Grid dataset, a quality controlled gridded climate product produced by the Met Office at 1km spatial resolution (v1.3.1.ceda, 1836-2024). The dataset includes mean annual rainfall depth in mm, seasonal mean rainfall depth (winter, spring, summer, and autumn), annual precipitation anomalies, both absolute (mm difference from historical baseline) and standardised (divided by historical standard deviation), extreme rainfall indicators, including the number of days exceeding 4 standard deviations above the historical daily mean. Annual and seasonal values were aggregated from raster to LAD using an area weighted mean. Extreme event indicators were first calculated at the pixel level using daily data and then aggregated to LAD level.
Contact Point:
Documentation
Documentation:
The dataset contains the following variables: 'LAD21CD' (LAD code identifier); 'LAD21NM' (LAD name); 'rainfall_annual_mm' (mean annual rainfall depth in mm, area-weighted mean across pixels); 'winter_rainfall' (mean winter season rainfall depth in mm); 'spring_rainfall' (mean spring season rainfall depth in mm); 'summer_rainfall' (mean summer season rainfall depth in mm); 'autumn_rainfall' (mean autumn season rainfall depth in mm); 'annual_anomaly_abs' (absolute annual precipitation anomaly from historical baseline in mm); 'annual_anomaly_std' (standardised annual precipitation anomaly); 'extreme_days_4sd' (number of days where daily rainfall exceeded 4 standard deviations above historical mean); 'year' (reference year).
Coverage
Spatial
Spatial Coverage:
United Kingdom
Geographical Levels:
LAD
Temporal
Start Date:
Annual: 01-01-2018:31-12-2018; Summer: 01-06-2018:31-08-2018; Winter:
01-12-2018:28-02-2019; Baseline: 01-01-1899:31-12-1900
Frequency:
Annual, seasonal, and daily (for extreme event detection)
Date of Latest Release:
08 May 2026
Date of First Release:
01 May 2026
Provenance
Origin
Purpose:
HadUK-Grid data are quality-controlled observational data interpolated to a 1km
grid. Coverage might differ across England, Wales, and Scotland depending on
ground-station coverage, with slightly lower station density in Northern Ireland
and remote areas. Temporal standard deviations capture seasonal precipitation
variation. It is important to note that the underlying input data has a spatial
resolution of 1km x 1km, which should be considered when interpreting results
for administrative areas finer than this scale. Further technical details are
available in the HadUK-Grid documentation at:
https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/f02cc6ddd92f45b18b9ab6ab544df7d9
Source:
The underlying data source is the HadUK-Grid dataset, a comprehensive collection of gridded climate observations produced by the Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Science and Services. HadUK-Grid combines quality-controlled observations from the UK Met Office's weather station observations and uses natural neighbour interpolation to generate a regular 1km grid. The dataset is described in: Hollis, D., McCarthy, M., Kendon, M., Legg, T., Simpson, I. (2019): HadUK-Grid—A new UK dataset of gridded climate observations. Geoscience data journal, 6(2), 151-159. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/gdj3.78. Precipitation anomalies were calculated by comparing 2018 annual mean precipitation against the 1899-1900 baseline period mean and standard deviation for each pixel and then aggregate to the LAD. The aggregation was performed using the Local Authority Districts (December 2021) Boundaries GB BUC, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Geography Portal (https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/datasets/ons::local-authority-districts-december-2021-boundaries-gb-buc-1/about) by calculating the weighted mean of all grid cells falling within each Local Authority District (LAD) geography.
Collection Status:
1.0
Author 1
Name Organisation:
Imago: Data Service for Imagery
Family Name Person:
Martina Pardy
Access and Governance
Usage
Data Use Requirements:
None
Access
Access Rights:
CC-BY-4.0
Licence:
CC-BY-4.0
Format and Standards
Estimated Dataset Size:
61KB, 78.8MB
Vocabulary Encoding Scheme:
EPSG:27700, OSGB36/British National Grid