UKCP09: Long-Term Average Days of Ground Frost on a 5km UK Grid

12 monthly gridded files represent the average days of ground frost across the UK for the 1961-1990 period. The Met Office created this dataset with financial support from the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Data access requires registration on the Met Office website.

Use Cases

• Modeling agricultural frost risk based on long-term monthly ground frost averages.
• Analyzing historical climate variability for the 1961-1990 period based on gridded frost data.
• Calibrating climate projection models using the 30-year baseline average data.
• Assessing regional differences in frost frequency across the UK's 5km grid.

Strengths

• Covers a 30-year climatological reference period (1961-1990).
• Provides data on a consistent 5km spatial grid across the UK.
• Includes 12 separate files for monthly analysis of frost days.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data may reflect temporal bias inherent to the specific 1961-1990 period.
• Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Met Office, UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Collection Method

Gridded observational data, likely derived from station measurements and spatial interpolation.

Time Range

1961-1990 (long-term average).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:31:08.615444; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United Kingdom, on a 5km grid.