Version: 1.0 | Published: 30 Jun 2026 | Updated: 0 days ago
Precipitation per MSOA in 2019
Dataset
Summary
Description:
This dataset provides comprehensive precipitation indicators aggregated to MSOA-equivalent geographies for the United Kingdom for 2019. 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. Baselines differ by data type due to differences in HadUK-Grid input data availability: annual anomalies are calculated relative to the 1884-1900 baseline period, while extreme day indicators use the 1891-1900 baseline period. Annual and seasonal values were aggregated from raster to MSOA using an area weighted mean. Extreme event indicators were first calculated at the pixel level using daily data and then aggregated to MSOA level.
Contact Point:
Documentation
Documentation:
The dataset contains the following variables: 'dt_zn_c' (MSOA zone code identifier); 'dt_zn_n' (MSOA zone 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 1884-1900 baseline in mm); 'annual_anomaly_std' (standardised annual precipitation anomaly relative to 1884-1900 baseline); 'extreme_days_4sd' (number of days where daily rainfall exceeded 4 standard deviations above the 1891-1900 historical mean); 'year' (reference year).
Coverage
Spatial
Spatial Coverage:
United Kingdom
Geographical Levels:
MSOA
Temporal
Start Date:
Annual: 01-01-2019:31-12-2019; Summer: 01-06-2019:31-08-2019; Winter:
01-12-2019:29-02-2020; Annual anomaly baseline: 01-01-1884:31-12-1900; Extreme
event baseline: 01-01-1891:31-12-1900
Frequency:
1.6MB, 93.1MB
Date of Latest Release:
30 June 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. The 4
standard deviation threshold identifies days where daily rainfall substantially
exceeded the historically expected range at each pixel, based on the 1891-1900
baseline period (the earliest period for which daily precipitation data are
available in HadUK-Grid). For each pixel, the mean and standard deviation of
daily precipitation were calculated across the baseline period, and days where
daily rainfall exceeded the pixel-level mean by 4 or more standard deviations
were counted as extreme. A threshold of 4 SD was selected to capture
statistically rare and exceptional precipitation events that fall well beyond
normal variability, consistent with approaches used in climate extremes
research. Extreme day counts were calculated across the full annual period
(Jan-Dec) and subsequently aggregated to MSOA-equivalent geographies using
area-weighted means.
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. Baselines differ by data type due to differences in HadUK-Grid input data availability: annual precipitation anomalies were calculated by comparing 2019 annual mean precipitation against the 1884-1900 baseline period mean and standard deviation for each pixel; extreme day indicators were calculated using the 1891-1900 baseline period (the earliest period for which daily data are available). Both were subsequently aggregated to the MSOA. The aggregation was performed using the MSOA-equivalent boundaries (2021) by calculating the weighted mean of all grid cells falling within each Middle Super Output Area (MSOA) 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:
1.6MB, 93.1MB
Vocabulary Encoding Scheme:
EPSG:27700, OSGB36/British National Grid