UK Met Office Hadley Centre Archive

UK Met Office Hadley Centre Archive
Name	UK Met Office Hadley Centre Archive
Country	United Kingdom
Established	1990s
Location	Exeter
Type	Climate and meteorological archive

UK Met Office Hadley Centre Archive The UK Met Office Hadley Centre Archive is a national archive for climate model output, observational datasets, and policy-relevant records curated by the Met Office Hadley Centre. It supports climate science, international assessments, and national adaptation by preserving model experiments, instrumental records, and metadata for use by researchers from institutions such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Met Office, and World Meteorological Organization.

History and Development

The archive traces origins to initiatives at the Met Office and the Hadley Centre for Climate Science and Services during the 1990s, shaped by collaborations with the UK Research and Innovation, Natural Environment Research Council, University of Exeter, University of Reading, and the University of East Anglia. It grew alongside major projects and assessments including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report, the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project cycles such as CMIP3, CMIP5, and CMIP6, and programmatic links to the Global Climate Observing System, Climate Change Act 2008, and the Royal Society. The archive’s development was influenced by archives at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, British Antarctic Survey, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, and the Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Science and Services (HCCSS) network, reflecting standards from the World Data Center system and the European Space Agency initiatives.

Collections and Holdings

Holdings include coupled climate model output from HadCM3, HadGEM1, HadGEM2-ES, and HadGEM3 experiments, historical observational records such as the Central England Temperature series, gridded products aligned with datasets from HadISD, HadCRUT, and HadUK-Grid. The archive contains reanalysis datasets comparable to ERA-Interim, ERA5, and contributions complementing products from NOAA ESRL, NCEP, and JRA-55. It preserves metadata consistent with standards promoted by Climate and Forecast (CF) Metadata Convention adopters, integrating provenance practices from the Open Geospatial Consortium and catalogue frameworks used by the British Library, National Archives (UK), and UK Data Service.

Data Access and Formats

Data access mechanisms reflect interoperability with platforms such as the Earth System Grid Federation, the Copernicus Climate Change Service, and the Global Change Information System. Formats in use include NetCDF, GRIB, and ancillary ASCII and spreadsheet exports compatible with tools from European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and analysis libraries developed at Princeton University, University of Colorado Boulder, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Holdings are catalogued using identifiers interoperable with registries like DataCite and standards adopted by Research Data Alliance, Digital Curation Centre, and the UK Research and Innovation data-management policies.

Research and Applications

The archive underpins research cited in reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, informs assessments by the Committee on Climate Change, and supports modeling efforts at the Met Office Hadley Centre, University of Oxford, Imperial College London, University of Cambridge, London School of Economics, King's College London, and international partners such as Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Applications include attribution studies referenced alongside work from National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Institute for Space Studies, sectoral risk assessments used by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, and adaptation planning in coordination with agencies like Environment Agency (England) and DEFRA. The archive’s datasets have informed publications in journals associated with Nature Climate Change, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Climate, and recommendations by bodies such as the Royal Meteorological Society.

Governance, Preservation, and Policies

Custodianship aligns with standards from the National Archives (UK), data-protection considerations related to Information Commissioner's Office, and licensing practices compatible with the Creative Commons family and institutional policies from Met Office, UK Research and Innovation, and the Natural Environment Research Council. Preservation strategies incorporate digital preservation approaches promoted by the Digital Preservation Coalition, provenance tracking recommended by the Open Archival Information System, and audit frameworks used by the International Organization for Standardization and the British Standards Institution. Access and embargo policies reflect obligations under legislation like the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and commitments to open data advocated by Cabinet Office (UK) policies.

Collaborations and Outreach

The archive collaborates with international partners including the World Meteorological Organization, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, European Commission, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and research consortia such as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project and the Climate Model Intercomparison Project. Outreach activities engage stakeholders from local authorities in England, non-governmental organizations like Greenpeace and WWF-UK, insurers such as Lloyd's of London, and user communities at institutions like Met Office Hadley Centre, University of Bristol, University of Leeds, University of Manchester, and University of Southampton. Training and capacity-building leverage networks including the European Geosciences Union, American Geophysical Union, Royal Society, and professional bodies such as the Royal Meteorological Society.

Category:Archives in the United Kingdom Category:Climate data