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Academic research

The full range of Met Office archived data and services are available to the research and academic community. These data may be provided at preferential rates or even free of charge.

The Met Office policy on supplying data at preferential rates to academia can be found in the Royal Meteorological Society journal, Weather Vol 50, No. 2, pp. 59-61 (February 1995).

 

Higher education projects

If your project meets the requirements of our research terms and conditions, then data may be provided at preferential rates or even free of charge. This does not apply to commercial products.  To find out more and request this data, please see the data catalogue.
Alternative sources of free data


The Met Office National Meteorological Archive contains an extensive range of weather records and is open to the public. It may be possible for you to visit and photocopy records or copy data onto a laptop.

In addition the following information is available free of charge via our website.

The following links provide a large amount of free data suitable for academic use.
 
Historic station data -
contains monthly data for 26 stations, in some cases back to 1853.
Central England temperatures -
contains monthly temperature data of the Central England area back to 1659.
England and Wales precipitation -
contains monthly rainfall data for the England and Wales region back to 1766.
Latest monthly assessment -
contains links to historical data series of temperature, rainfall and sunshine for the three regions England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
Climate averages -
for tabulated and mapped long term climate averages.

BADC data


If your project is purely academic research where the results are published in the open literature, you are entitled to use the meteorological data stored and managed by the British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC).
Met Office terms and conditions


All services are supplied under the Met Office terms and conditions or for research under our research licence terms and conditions. For large volumes of data you will be asked to sign a contract.
Methods of payment

Where charges are made, payment can be made either by invoice or credit card. We are pleased to invoice customers subject to meeting our credit control criteria. Our payment terms are 30 days from date of invoicing. Please note invoices can only be raised for amounts of £250 and above. We accept payment by all main credit cards. Urgency fees are levied for customers requiring rapid turnaround. We endeavour to mutually agree delivery times with our customers.