This dataset contains a set of daily observations of temperature (daily maximum, daily minimum and daily mean temperature) and rainfall (24 hour accumulation) interpolated to a uniform 5km grid resolution covering the period 1960 to 2014.

The input station data originate from the Met Office Integrated Data Archive System - MIDAS - a database at the Met Office of observation station data stretching back to the 18th century. (A version of MIDAS is also available through CEDA, although incremental developments to the database such as quality control and data recovery activities may result in some differences compared to the database at the time of production of the UKCP09 data - see linked datasets for access to these equivalent datasets held by CEDA).

The input station data used provide observations relating to periods 0900 to 0900 UTC, so the gridded output stored against day "dd" are as follows:

• Maximum temperature between 0900 on day dd and 0900 on day dd+1 (normally expect to occur during the afternoon of day dd)

• Minimum temperature between 0900 on day dd-1 and 0900 on day dd (normally expect to occur just before dawn on day dd)

• Mean temperature that is the average of the maximum and minimum temperature

• Rainfall (or rainfall equivalent in cases of frozen precipitation) amount between 0900 day dd and 0900 day dd+1

The gridding process accounts for effects such as latitude, longitude, altitude, coastal influence, and the effect of urban land through the use of normalisation with respect to monthly 1961 – 1990 climate normals, and in the case of temperature, a regression model.

The data are provide in CF-1.5 compliant NetCDF format. The data are additionally provided in ESRI-ascii format, suitable for ingestion in GIS applications, and a simple timeseries format for users requiring a limited number of points.