About the BADC

Mission Statement:

"The role of the NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC) is to assist UK researchers to locate, access and interpret atmospheric data and to ensure the long-term integrity of atmospheric data produced by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) projects."

Jump to: Research within BADC : History of the BADC : Job Opportunities : Link to other NERC Data Centres

The BADC is one of the centres and facilities in the NERC Centres for Atmospheric Sciences, NCAS. NCAS carries out the core research programme in atmospheric science funded by NERC. The BADC is one of seven designated data centres established to carry out the NERC data policy. This policy is outlined in the NERC Data Policy, which outlines the responsibilities of both NERC funded researchers and the NERC designated data centres.

The BADC, NERC designated data centre for the Atmospheric Sciences, is based in the CEDA group, within the Space Science and Technology Department at the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in Oxfordshire. It is one of the two NERC data centres hosted at the Laboratory. The other one being the NEODC

The BADC has substantial data holdings of its own and also provides information and links to data held by other data centres. The data held at the BADC are of two types:

Datasets produced by NERC-funded projects; these datasets are of high priority since the BADC may be the only long-term archive of the data.
Third party datasets that are required by a large section of the UK atmospheric research community and are most efficiently made available through one location (e.g. Met Office and ECMWF datasets).

All BADC data are available on-line through our website or via an ftp service. Software is provided to assist in the manipulation of the data and extensive information is provided on the data collection procedures, formats, data quality, contact names and references to journal papers. Other specialist services include the development of value added data products such as averaged and gridded data and the generation of video sequencing of data for viewing large datasets.

Since establishment under the aegis of the NERC data policy, the BADC has become the defacto point of contact for UK researchers needing access to the meteorological products of both the Met Office and the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF). There is also considerable interest from the international research community in BADC data holdings, in particular the Met Office data. The BADC is also required to take a proactive role in the data management practices of NERC thematic programmes.

In addition to data support activities, there is a small research programme within the BADC (with funding from the NERC Centres for Atmospheric Science, NCAS). To find out more about research projects at the BADC, please read the Research within the BADC page.

The BADC is a major part of the NERC datagrid.

To find out more about the BADC historical background, please read the History of the BADC page.

Finally if you would like to join our enthusiastic team of Data Scientists, please check the Job Opportunities at the BADC page.

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