Weather Station – Dundee

The weather station at the James Hutton Institute site in Dundee has been recording the weather since 1954.

The weather station, or meteorological site, at the James Hutton Institute site in Dundee has been recording the weather since 1954. Every day a variety of observations such as air and soil temperatures, wind, sunshine and rainfall data, cloud cover and visibility, amongst others are recorded.

This provides a comprehensive weather log that enables staff and other interested parties to assess with precision how weather conditions like rainfall and strong winds might have affected activities, such as planting, crop spraying, harvesting and insect behaviour.

We have one of the longest running continuous meteorological databases relevant to agriculture in the UK. Our weather station is one of the few that has soil thermometers at five different depths namely 10, 20, 30, 50 and 100 cm.

The Institute's data contributes to a nationwide database at the Met Office providing evidence of weather patterns and climate change, therefore accuracy is crucial. Our data therefore benefits many different groups including the public, government, schools, broadcasters, online media, civil aviation and almost every other industry sector - in the UK and around the world.

Historically we have recorded weather at a single point in time (09:00 GMT), however, moving forward with the installation of a state-of-the-art automatic weather station, we will have the opportunity to record weather at a range of times during the day including the standard 09:00 measurement.

This is important in the context of climate change where rainfall intensity is predicted to increase and a single 24 hour recording of weather would not capture this information.

Weather data

Past four weeks

Monthly totals

For details on the availability of more comprehensive weather data email: weather@hutton.ac.uk [1]