This is version 1.0.1.2012p of HadISD the Met Office Hadley Centre's global sub-daily data, extending v1.0.0.2011f to span 1/1/1973 - 31/12/2012.

The quality controlled variables in this dataset are: temperature, dewpoint temperature, sea-level pressure, wind speed and direction, cloud data (total, low, mid and high level). Past significant weather and precipitation data are also included, but have not been quality controlled, so their quality and completeness cannot be guaranteed. Quality control flags and data values which have been removed during the quality control process are provided in the qc_flags and flagged_values fields, and ancillary data files show the station listing with a station listing with IDs, names and location information.

The data are provided as one NetCDF file per station. Files in the station_data folder station data files have the format "station_code"_HadISD_HadOBS_19730101-20121231_v1-0-1-2012p.nc. The station codes can be found under the docs tab or on the archive beside the station_data folder. The station codes file has five columns as follows: 1) station code, 2) station name 3) station latitude 4) station longitude 5) station height.

To keep up to date with updates, news and announcements follow the HadOBS team on twitter @metofficeHadOBS.

For more detailed information e.g bug fixes, routine updates and other exploratory analysis, see the HadISD blog: http://hadisd.blogspot.co.uk/

References:

When using the dataset in a paper you must cite the following papers (see Docs for link to the publications) and this dataset (using the "citable as" reference) :

Dunn, R. J. H., et al. (2012), HadISD: A Quality Controlled global synoptic report database for selected variables at long-term stations from 1973-2011, Clim. Past, 8, 1649-1679, 2012, doi:10.5194/cp-8-1649-2012

Smith, A., N. Lott, and R. Vose, 2011: The Integrated Surface Database: Recent Developments and Partnerships. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 92, 704–708, doi:10.1175/2011BAMS3015.1