Published on 14 November 2025

Earlier this year, NERC highlighted its partnership with the Met Office as key to strengthening resilience across communities and businesses, while advancing climate science. At the heart of this collaboration is a shared commitment to data, how it’s collected, managed, and used to inform decisions that affect us all. Through the NERC Environmental Data Service (EDS), and with support from Met Office and NERC Research Centre partners, a wide range of products and services are being developed to meet real-world needs. This article explores how trusted data and expert knowledge come together to tackle environmental challenges through strategic partnerships. 

Operational forecasts and hazard services 

When it comes to predicting and responding to natural hazards such as floods, droughts, wildfires, or landslides, timing and accuracy are everything. Forecasting services rely on both near-real-time and long-term environmental data to spot trends, guide decisions, and reduce risks. The EDS plays a vital role by supplying critical datasets to platforms such as the Met Office’s Hazard Manager and the Natural Hazards Partnership’s Daily Hazard Assessment. These tools are used by emergency responders to plan and act quickly when extreme weather strikes. 

Some examples of the NERC EDS data behind these services include: 

The importance of space weather monitoring 

The Met Office doesn’t just issue forecasts regarding weather on the Earth’s surface, its Met Office Space Weather Operations Centre (MOSWOC) is one of a very few 24/7 space weather prediction centres globally.  

Space weather, such as solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and solar wind, can severely disrupt Positional, Navigational, and Timing (PNT) technologies, including Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and Magnetic Navigation (MagNav) which are essential for everything from mobile phones and radio to power grids and financial systems.  During major solar events, aircraft may even change flight paths or altitudes to reduce passengers’ exposure to natural radiation. 

As our society becomes more connected and technology-dependent, the need for accurate PNT data grows. The BGS supports this by hosting the British Isles continuous GNSS Facility (BIGF), with data managed in collaboration with NGDC. 

The EDS’s Polar Data Centre (UK PDC) also contributes through projects like SaRIF and SWIMMR. These initiatives involve sharing data through APIs and running forecast models on the Met Office’s cloud infrastructure—demonstrating how collaboration and technology go hand in hand. 

Geomagnetism and infrastructure protection

Geomagnetic data is another powerful tool in predicting and managing environmental risks. For example, Broadband Magnetotelluric data deposited to NGDC is used to create real-time maps that show potential disruptions to power grids, railways, and pipelines. One key contributor is the BGS-operated Eskdalemuir Observatory in Scotland, which has been collecting geophysical and meteorological data for over a century and holds special centennial observing station status from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). 

During periods of high solar activity, when auroras light up the skies, BGS and the Met Office work together to monitor conditions and forecast the development of solar storms. These forecasts help protect infrastructure and keep essential services running smoothly.

Photo of green and purple aurora over night-time horizon

Aurora Borealis over Keyworth, Nottingham, October 2024. Credit: Elliot Bird - BGS  

Making climate data accessible to all 

The EDS also acts as a ‘front door’ for long-term climate data, helping researchers, policymakers, and the public access valuable information. The Met Office produces national climate reports, and the underlying datasets are released via CEDA (the atmospheric and earth observation data centre within EDS), with over 5,000 users accessing Met Office data held at CEDA last year. 

This data falls into three main categories: 

  • Operational weather data: Includes rainfall maps (NIMROD), surface and upper air observations, and satellite data (MetDB), global observations such as daily and hourly weather measurements, max and min air temperatures, soil temperatures, and many more (MIDAS-restricted) 

  • Climate predictions: Includes contributions to international modelling projects like CMIP, which help us understand past, present, and future climate changes. 

  • Research publications: Any research data produced by the Met Office that is archived to provide a long-term evidence base. 

Popular open-access datasets include: 

  • MIDAS Open one of CEDAs most popular weather observation datasets. It has a low barrier to access due to the format of the data (CSV which can be analysed with Excel). It is also highly ranked on Google for search terms such as ‘free UK historical weather data’. 

  • HadUK-Grid - gridded weather variables including a range of temporal and spatial resolutions for tracking the UK climate.

Contributing to global data initiatives

Weather is a global phenomenon and requires collaboration across international meteorological agencies. The World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Global Telecommunication Service (GTS) plays a vital role in this effort by enabling the worldwide exchange of weather observations. These observations underpin the Met Office’s forecasting capabilities, and the NERC EDS contributes data directly into this system. 

The EDS’s oceanography and polar data centres (BODC and UK PDC) deliver both surface (Argo) and deep sea (glider) data to the WMO GTS via the UK Met Office. Argo is an international programme consisting of ~4000 autonomous floats that measure oceanographic properties across the world’s oceans, with BODC serving as the UK Argo Data Centre.  

Another fundamental tool of oceanography is an instrument called a CTD instrument (conductivity, temperature, depth), which a UK PDC-developed script automatically sends summary data from any CTDs deployed from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) research cruises to the Met Office’s modelling and forecasting teams. 

In Antarctica, meteorological data is collected by both human observers and automated weather stations (AWS). Working with the meteorology team at BAS, the UK PDC develops and maintains software that sends SYNOP messages (a numerical code used for reporting weather observations) which are also included in the WMO GTS. 

Photo of a tall scientific instrument sticking out the snow, with distant pyramid tent to the left, and distant twin otter aircraft to the right.

Automatic Weather Station (AWS) on the Larsen Ice Shelf, Antarctica. Credit: Pete Bucktrout - BAS

Staff partnerships and expertise sharing

Collaboration isn’t just about data; it’s about people. EDS staff and their host organisations work closely with the Met Office, sharing expertise and building strategic partnerships. For example, CEDA has two staff members based at the Met Office HQ in Exeter, helping ensure observational and Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) data flows directly into the CEDA archive for wider access and reuse. 

Data exchange also flows in reverse, with the Met Office requesting CTD and eXpendable BathyThermograph (XBT) data from BODC. Joint efforts have also led to efficiency gains, such as leveraging charter vessel tenders to maintain the Met Office’s buoy network sustainably. 

Adding value to archived data by responding to community needs 

The Met Office and NERC EDS collaborate to improve shared data flows, ensuring developments align with stakeholder needs. These efforts support the environmental research community and benefit users ranging from policymakers to the public. 

A prime example is the partnership between BODC and the Met Office to enhance autonomous glider data. This led to a new file format and real-time quality checks for temperature and salinity data. Driven by the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) Innovations department, the improvements will benefit all glider datasets, most of which are NERC-funded. 

Similarly, BGS developed GeoClimate UKCP09 and UKCP18 by integrating Met Office climate projections with geotechnical data stored at the NGDC. These national shrink–swell datasets highlight areas likely to face increased subsidence risk due to climate change, supporting informed decisions for future UK infrastructure planning. 

Bringing it all together 

From space weather to landslides, and from deep-sea gliders to Antarctic weather stations, the collaboration between NERC EDS and the Met Office is a powerful example of how data and expertise can come together to solve real-world problems.  

There’s are just some of the ways in which our two organisations collaborate, but there are many more pieces of the puzzle which come together to support the national and international weather and climate community. If you’d like to learn more about these services or explore how they might support your work, get in touch with the NERC Environmental Data Service.