UKCP09: UK Regional Rainfall Intensity Averages for 1961-1990 Baseline

UK regional and river basin averages for rainfall intensity on days with rain ≥ 1 mm, based on the 1961-1990 climate baseline. The dataset was created with financial support from the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and promoted by the UK Climate Impacts Programme. Data is provided as space-delimited text files, requiring registration on the Met Office website for access.

Use Cases

• Calculate long-term average rainfall intensity for UK administrative regions based on the 1961-1990 baseline.
• Compare rainfall intensity patterns between different UK river basins using the provided annual averages.
• Establish a historical climate baseline for hydrological modeling using the regional grid-cell averages.

Strengths

• Covers a 30-year climate baseline period (1961-1990).
• Provides data for 14 administrative regions and 23 river basins.
• Values are derived from averages of underlying 5 x 5 km grid cells.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Freshness should be verified; last metadata update was 2026-07-08.

Provenance

Source

Met Office

Collection Method

Each regional value is an average of the 5 x 5 km grid cell values that fall within it.

Time Range

1961-1990

Freshness

Last metadata update was 2026-07-08.

Geography

United Kingdom (14 administrative regions and 23 river basins)