Precipitation per LAD in 2016

This dataset provides comprehensive precipitation indicators aggregated to Local Authority District geographies for the United Kingdom for 2016. 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 LAD using an area weighted mean. Extreme event indicators were first calculated at the pixel level using daily data and then aggregated to LAD level.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field	Value
Author	Imago Team
Maintainer	Martina Pardy
Version	1.0
Last Updated	July 2, 2026, 13:07 (UTC)
Created	May 1, 2026, 13:23 (UTC)
Size	61KB, 78.8MB
constraints	None
content	The dataset contains the following variables: 'LAD21CD' (LAD code identifier); 'LAD21NM' (LAD 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).
crs	EPSG:27700, OSGB36/British National Grid
data_quality	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 Local Authority District geographies using area-weighted means.
data_source
file_id
lineage	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 2024 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 LAD. The aggregation was performed using the Local Authority Districts (December 2021) Boundaries GB BUC, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Geography Portal (https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/datasets/ons::local-authority-districts-december-2021-boundaries-gb-buc-1/about) by calculating the weighted mean of all grid cells falling within each Local Authority District (LAD) geography.
source	Imago: Data Service for Imagery
spatial_coverage	United Kingdom
spatial_resolution	LAD
temporal_coverage	Annual: 01-01-2016:31-12-2016; Summer: 01-06-2016:31-08-2016; Winter: 01-12-2016:28-02-2017; Annual anomaly baseline: 01-01-1884:31-12-1900; Extreme event baseline: 01-01-1891:31-12-1900"
temporal_resolution	Annual, seasonal, and daily (for extreme event detection)