UKCP09: Gridded Annual Cooling Degree Days for the United Kingdom

UK gridded datasets of annual cooling degree day values, which sum the daily degrees above 22°C air temperature. The data was created with financial support from the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and promoted by the UK Climate Impacts Programme. The dataset was last updated on 2026-07-08.

Use Cases

• Modeling building energy demand for cooling based on annual temperature exceedance values.
• Assessing regional climate change impacts on heat stress using gridded annual summaries.
• Projecting future cooling infrastructure needs across the UK based on historical temperature patterns.

Strengths

• Data is gridded, providing spatial coverage across the United Kingdom.
• Supported by a government department (Defra) and a national climate program (UKCIP).
• Last updated on 2026-07-08, indicating recent maintenance.

Limitations

• Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Access requires registration on the Met Office website, adding a step to data acquisition.

Provenance

Source

Met Office, created with support from the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Collection Method

Likely derived from meteorological station observations and interpolation to a grid.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:33:09.143860

Geography

United Kingdom