Continuous meteorological surface and soil records (2004–2024) at the Met Office surface site of Cardington, UK

Abstract. A continuous meteorological and hydrological observational record is described for the Met Office semi-rural field site of Cardington in southern England between 2004 and 2024. The site was designed to carry out boundary layer, fog and air-surface exchange research to improve the representation of process-based physics within the Met Office Unified Model. The site lay in a flat river basin and was laid mainly to cropped grass and was surrounded by arable fields intermixed with small trees and shrubs through most wind sectors. Observations utilised flux masts at various heights, plus visibility, radiosondes, very near-surface and subsoil in situ sensors in addition to more specialist remote sensing instruments to retrieve atmospheric properties. In addition to boundary layer and surface data, soil properties such as temperature, moisture and water table depth were obtained. All components of the surface energy balance could be determined. Availability of data based on 30 min time steps over 20 years, for the combined components of the energy balance not flagged as either bad or missing, amounts to 77 %. The momentum roughness length as determined at the 10 m height for the prevailing wind sector remained near 3 cm from 2005–2022 but increased to 7 cm in 2023 and 2024 predominately due to growth in a 52 ha of woodland within 1 km of the site. An overview of the site, instrumentation, data availability, quality control, data storage at the UK CEDA repository, and potential uses of the dataset are described (https://doi.org/10.5285/5487380511084413a502c4b229273bc6, Met Office et al., 2025). A set of meteorological forcing files has also been compiled suitable for driving standalone land surface models configured for a single point.