Oxidant and Particle Photochemical Processes above a South-East Asian tropical rain forest (OP3-Danum-08) is a 3-year Consortium Grant of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), beginning 1 October 2007. The OP3-Danum-08 consortium consists of 23 PIs and co-PIs from eight UK institutions (seven Universities and one NERC laboratory), plus partners from the Malaysian Meteorological Department, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Yayasan Sabah and USA. The project will utillize the NERC Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements reaserch aircraft ( FAAM) and a Global Atmosheric Watch station , with 100m research tower, in an undisturbed rainforest in Sabah Malaysia. The objectives of the OP3-Danum-08 project are (i) to understand how emissions of reactive trace gases from a tropical rain forest mediate the production and processing of oxidants and particles in the troposphere, and (ii) to better understand the impact of these processes on local, regional and global scale atmospheric composition, chemistry and climate. The field campaign phase of the project consists of 2 separate ground-based measurement periods at the Danum Valley Research centre (7th April - 4th May 2008 and 21st June - 27th July 2008). The second of these campaigns will involve concurrent observations above the ground based site aboard the FAAM BAe 146 aircraft, a collaboration between the Met Office(TM) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). There was also a ground based measurement period from 10th May - 12th June based at the Sabahmas Estate oil plantation, which was part of the APPRAISE funded ACES project. Data from all 4 parts of the project can be found in the OP3 archive. The OP3 project is led by Professor Nick Hewitt (University of Lancaster)

FireMAFS was led by Prof Martin Wooster (Kings College, London) as part of QUEST Theme 3 (Quantifying and Understanding the Earth System) project. This dataset collection contains the MODIS Land Cover Type product multiple classification schemes, which describe land cover properties derived from observations spanning a year’s input of Terra and Aqua data. The data are stored in a 10 arc minute grid. Fire was the most important disturbance agent worldwide in terms of area and variety of biomass affected, a major mechanism by which carbon is transferred from the land to the atmosphere, and a globally significant source of aerosols and many trace gas species. Despite such clear coupling between fire, climate, and vegetation, fire was not modelled as an interactive component of the climate/earth systems models of full complexity or intermediate complexity, that are used to model terrestrial ecosystem processes principally for simulating CO2 exchanges. The objective of FireMAFS was to resolve these limitations by developing a robust method to forecast fire activity (fire 'danger' indices, ignition probabilities, burnt area, fire intensity etc), via a process-based model of fire-vegetation interactions, tested, improved, and constrained. This used a state-of-the-art EO data products and driven by seasonal weather forecasts issued with many months lead-time. Much of the activity of FireMAFS was shaped by the research and technical priorities of QUESTESM (earth system model). Key activities included the progressive development of the JULES-ED and SPITFIRE submodels. Fire is now very well represented in QESM (Quest Earth System Model), making progress towards a modelling capability for fire risk forecasting in the context of global change.

The International Satellite Land Surface Climatology Project (ISLSCP) has the lead role in addressing land-atmosphere interactions - process modelling, data retrieval algorithms, field experiment design and execution, and the development of global data sets. The ISLSCP II dataset contains comprehensive data over the 10 year period from 1986 to 1995, from the International Satellite Land Surface Climatology Project (ISLSCP). The ISLSCP II datasets are compiled in four key areas: land cover, hydrometeorlolgy, radiation and soils. They are mapped to consistent grids (0.5 x 0.5 degrees for topography, 1 x 1 degrees for meteorological parameters). Some data have a grid size of 0.25 x 0.25 degrees. The temporal resolution for most data sets is monthly (however a few are at finer resolution - 3 hourly). This dataset is public. ISLSCP is one of several projects of the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX), and has the lead role in addressing land-atmosphere interactions - process modelling, data retrieval algorithms, field experiment design and execution, and the development of global data sets. ISLSCP was established in 1983 under the United Nation's Environmental Programme to promote the use of satellite data for the global land surface data sets needed for climate studies. In 1994, ISLSCP produced a five-volume CD-ROM collection of global data sets to support energy, water and biogeochemical cycling studies, covering 1987 - 1988 - the ISLSCP I Initiative. The ISLSCP I data sets are available via the BADC ISLSCP I page. The ISLSCP working group meet regularly to assist Goddard Space Flight Center staff to coordinate production and publication of the various data sets in the data collection.

Under the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), the Working Group on Cloupled Modelling (WGCM) established the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) as a standard experimental protocol for studying the output of coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs). CMIP provides a community-based infrastructure in support of climate model diagnosis, validation, intercomparison, documentation and data access. This framework enables a diverse community of scientists to analyze GCMs in a systematic fashion, a process which serves to facilitate model improvement. The Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) archives much of the CMIP data. Part of the CMIP archive constitutes phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3), a collection of climate model output from simulations of the past, present and future climate. This unprecedented collection of recent model output is officially known as the "WCRP CMIP3 multi-model dataset". It is meant to serve the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s Working Group 1, which focuses on the physical climate system -- atmosphere, land surface, ocean and sea ice -- and the choice of variables archived reflects this focus. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Program to assess scientific information on climate change. The IPCC publishes reports that summarize the state of the science. The research based on this dataset provided much of the new material underlying the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).

The longest available instrumental record of temperature in the world is now available from CEDA-BADC. The monthly series of temperature begins in 1659 and the daily data starts in 1772. Seasonal series are also available. The mean, minimum and maximum datasets are updated monthly, with data for a month usually available by the 3rd of the next month. A provisional CET value for the current month is calculated on a daily basis. The mean daily data series begins in 1772 and the mean monthly data in 1659. Mean maximum and minimum daily and monthly data are also available, beginning in 1878. These historical temperature series are representative of the Midlands region in England, UK (a roughly triangular area of the United Kingdom enclosed by Bristol, Lancashire and London). Manley (1953,1974) compiled most of the monthly series, covering 1659 to 1973. These data were updated to 1991 by Parker et al (1992), when they calculated the daily series. Both series are now kept up to date by the Climate Data Monitoring section of the Hadley Centre, Met Office. Since 1974 the data have been adjusted by 0.1-0.3 degree C to allow for urban warming. The Met Office have also been compiling Maximum, Minimum and Mean Daily Central England Temperatures data files since January 1878. The following stations are used by the Met Office to compile the CET data: Rothamsted, Malvern, Squires Gate and Ringway. But in November 2004, the weather station Stonyhurst replaced Ringway and revised urban warming and bias adjustments have now been applied to the Stonyhurst data after a period of reduced reliability from the station in the summer months. The data set is compiled by the Met Office Hadley Centre.

The Met. Research Flight (MRF) was a Met Office facility, which operated a well instrumented C-130 Hercules (also referred to as Mk.2 Hercules) aircraft for research purposes. The C-130 was in service from 1972 to 2001 and flew over 1800 research sorties. The large capacity and long endurance of this platform made it ideal for atmospheric research in the areas of cloud physics, atmospheric radiation, atmospheric chemistry, satellite activities, mesoscale meteorology and boundary layer studies. The BADC holds data collected by the C-130 during NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) funded flights, such as those made during ACSOE (Atmospheric Chemistry Studies in the Oceanic Environment) and UTLS (Upper Troposphere - Lower Stratosphere) projects. The basic set of measurements include ozone, nitrogen oxides, water vapour, aerosols, wind, position and temperature. These are often supplemented by project specific measurements. The aircraft was able to operate scientifically throughout the troposphere from a minimum altitude of 15 m (50 ft) where permitted, up to a maximum of 10 km. The aircraft had a maximum working flight time of 12 hours. The C-130 was taken out of service in March 2001 and a new joint NERC-Met Office Facility for Airborne Aircraft Measurements (FAAM) was established operating a BAe-146-301 aircraft.

The Rain in Cumulus over the Ocean (RICO) was a US-led international project to study trade wind cumulus clouds in the Caribbean. The main objective was to characterise and understand the properties of trade wind cumulus at all scales, with particular emphasis on understanding the warm rain process and determining its importance. The field campaign took place near Antigua and Barbuda from the 17th of November 2004 to the 24th of January 2005. The UK participation to RICO involved ground-based measurements and the use of the FAAM aircraft based at Antigua, from the 5th to the 28th of January 2005.

These data consist of sets of 3-dimensional gridpoint analyses of the stratosphere which are produced by the Met Office using data from the TIROS Operational Vertical Sounder (TOVS) instruments onboard the NOAA (National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration) operational polar orbiters. TOVS consists of 3 instruments, the Stratospheric Sounding Unit (SSU) the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) and the High Resolution Infrared Sounder (HIRS). Daily radiance and geopotential height data are available on a 5 degree latitude / longitude global grid from December 1978 to April 1997. Software is provided to derive potential vorticity. Access permission required so that PI can monitor usage of data.

The Greenland Flow Distortion EXperiment, based in Keflavik, Iceland, took place during February 2007. Its aim was to improve the understanding and ability to predict interactions between the atmospheric circulation and the topography of Greenland, both locally and downstream over Western Europe. Hitherto rare in situ observations of high-impact weather systems and their associated air-sea fluxes in the coastal seas of Greenland, were obtained and will be used to improve the numerical modelling and prediction of these weather systems, and thus improve the quality of the atmospheric forcing fields that are essential for accurate atmosphere-ocean coupling and the thermohaline circulation. These measurements will also be used to improve the numerical modelling and prediction of high-impact weather systems over Europe through the use of targeted observations upstream in sensitive areas of the flow. This project investigates the role of Greenland in defining the structure and the predictability of both local and downstream weather systems, through a programme of aircraft-based observation and numerical modelling. The Greenland Flow Distortion Experiment (GFDex) will provide some of the first detailed in situ observations of the intense atmospheric forcing events that are thought to be important in modifying the ocean in this area (but are presently poorly understood): namely tip jets, barrier winds and mesoscale cyclones. Tip jets form at the southern tip of Greenland, at Cape Farewell, through the forcing of flow over and around the topography. Barrier winds occur when the large-scale flow is piled up against the southeast coast of Greenland, forcing winds parallel to the coast. While located off this southeast coast is an area of frequent mesoscale cyclogenesis. GFDex will also investigate Greenlands role in atmospheric flow predictability by carrying out upstream observations that are targeted at investigating the sensitivity of the downstream flow to the details of the upstream flow and at improving subsequent forecasts over Europe. Greenlands flow distortion can trigger large-scale atmospheric Rossby waves which influence weather systems thousands of kilometres away and several days later. These waves are by nature predictable, so by adapting our observing strategy to target specific areas, improvements in subsequent forecasts over the United Kingdom are possible. Numerical modelling experiments after the field campaign will be used to assess any improvements from the additional targeted observations. While further numerical modelling studies of the high impact local weather systems will be evaluated and refined using the aircraft-based observations. This will increase our understanding of these systems and, through comparisons with other observations and data sets, provide accurate fields of air-sea heat and moisture fluxes for driving ocean and climate models.

Chemistry of the Antarctic Boundary Layer and the Interface with Snow (CHABLIS) is a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and Antarctic Funding Initiative (AFI) funded project, aimed at studying the chemistry of the Antarctic Boundary Layer in greater detail, and for a longer duration, than has previously been attempted. Fieldwork was carried out at the new Clean Air Sector Laboratory (CASLab) at Halley station . The team from UK universities and the British Antarctic Survey brought to the project a suite of state-of-the-art instruments and models and a track record of successfully running major campaigns together in remote locations. The field campaign started during the austral summer in January 2004 and continued throughout the winter culminating with an intensive study during the summer of 04/05. Major foci for CHABLIS included detailed studies of seasonal oxidant chemistry, annual variation in the boundary layer NOy budget and elucidating air/snow transfer processes. The dataset includes mixing ratios (Ozone, CO, HCHO, NO2, and HONO), accumulation and isotope (Na, K, Mg, Ca, F, CH4, Cl, and NO3) concentrations of snow, and meteorological measurements (relative humidity, visibility, dew point, wind speed, and wind direction). Access to this dataset is now public.