Met Office Wind Profiler data (1998-onwards)

The Met Office took an interest in wind-profile data from the NERC MST Radar since the early years of the Facility. They purchased 4 of their own (nominally 1 GHz) boundary-layer wind-profilers, from Radian, in the late 1990's. The instruments are located at Camborne, Dunkeswell and Wattisham. The fourth was operated at the NERC MST Radar site at Capel Dewi, near Aberystwyth between November 1999 and March 2002; it was then relocated to South Uist until May 2005 and is currently located on the Isle of Man. A fifth wind-profiler (operating at 64MHz) has been in place on South Uist since 31st May 2004. This dataset contains wind profiler data from : Camborne from 1998 to present, Dunkeswell from 1999 to present, Wattisham from 2001 to present, Aberystwyth (Capel Dewi) 1999 to 2002, South Uist (915MHz) for 2003 to 2004 South Uist (64MHz) for 2004 to present, and Isle of Man for 2005 to 2008, and 2010.

Met office 915MHz wind profiler when located at Aberystwyth. Photo by David Hooper.

The wind-profiler instruments table contains individual operational properties of the four Met Office wind profilers, including BADC filenaming convention.

Further details on the general principles of wind-profiler instruments can be found on the NERC MST web pages.

Data from these wind-profilers, and from the NERC MST Radar, are used operationally by the Met Office for numerical weather prediction. They additionally receive data from up to another 15 wind-profiling systems throughout Europe as part of the CWINDE (COST Wind Initiative for a Network Demonstration in Europe) project.

A map showing the locations of the wind profilers is available on the CWINDE website.

The Met Office wish to monitor the use of this data and require an acknowledgement of the data source if they are used in any publication. The online application for access to the Met Office Wind Profiler data includes acceptance of the Met Office Conditions of Use.

Please note that the Met Office data sets are available for bona fide academic research only (sorry no undergraduates), on a per person per project basis (i.e. all members on a same project who will be using the data must individually apply for access to the data). If you wish to access the Met Office data for commercial or personal purposes, please contact the Met Office directly.

Your application for accessing the Met Office Wind Profiler data will be processed within a day of receipt and you will receive a confirmation email. Provided your application is complete and fully meets the Met Office conditions, a web account will be activated to allow you access to the Met Office wind profiler data directories via your login account from the BADC WWW Get Data pages.

These instruments make observations in two interlaced modes; the low mode covers the approximate altitude range 0.1 - 2.0 km at 0.1 km intervals, and the high mode covers the approximate altitude range 0.2 - 8.0 km at 0.2 km intervals. The useful altitude coverage varies with atmospheric conditions and only extends significantly above 2 km when precipitation is present. Although the cycle time for observations is of the order of a few minutes, the data used by the Met Office represent "consensus averages" over 30 minutes.

The data held at the BADC, are stored in a simple ASCII format (plain text and "human" readable). A detailed description of the file structure is available.

Extensive explanatory documentation about the principles of wind profilers can be found through the NERC MST radar website.

NERC MST Radar data are also held at the BADC.

FGAM wind profiler

UK Meteorological Office. Wind Profiler data (1998-onwards), [Internet]. NCAS British Atmospheric Data Centre, 2003, Date of citation. Available from http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/view/badc.nerc.ac.uk__ATOM__dataent_ukmowindpr

If you have queries about these pages or about obtaining the Met Office wind profiler data from the BADC then you should contact BADC Support. Your query should be answered within one working day. When follow-up work is required, the BADC support will carry out the work as quickly and efficiently as possible, and in any case, the user will be kept informed of progress.