Radcliffe Meteorological Station Oxford

Online monthly sunshine duration dataset - updated to Dec 2023

This file contains monthly, annual and seasonal totals of sunshine duration, as measured by a Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder throughout, from February 1880 to date.

The file format is CSV (comma separated variable), without Copyright restrictions.

Please let us know < email to rms@ouce.ox.ac.uk > should you find any errors in these datasets.

Periods of record
Monthly sunshine duration totals are available from February 1880; daily records have been digitised back to 1921, and will eventually include the entire record (from 1921, the monthly totals in this file are the sum of the daily values; this also applies for a few earlier months where daily values have been digitised, particularly very sunny or very dull months). Estimates have been made to cover minor periods of missing data.

Records are given in hours and tenths (rounded where necessary to one decimal place): there may be minor differences between the sum of daily values and the monthly total owing to rounding errors. Records may differ slightly from previously published data owing to inclusion of new information or corrections.

Full details on the source and derivation of the records, sunshine recorder exposure, times of observations etc are given in Oxford Weather and Climate since 1767, Appendix 1.

Dataset may be subject to changes, and will be updated periodically with current data.

If you use these datasets in publications, please cite the source as:

Oxford Weather and Climate since 1767 by Stephen Burt and Tim Burt, published by Oxford University Press, 2019.

Please let us know < email to rms@ouce.ox.ac.uk > should you find any errors in these datasets.

DATASET DOCUMENTATION
YYYY - Year (four digits). First record 1880
Jan   Monthly sunshine duration total at the Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford. Units hours and tenths.
Feb, Mar etc   similarly for each month of the year
Annual   Total annual sunshine duration at the Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford (sum of 12 monthly values). Units hours and tenths.
YYYY - Year (four digits) repeated. First record 1880
Winter - Seasonal total sunshine duration at the Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford. Units hours and tenths. Winter is the sum of Dec, Jan, Feb monthly totals, dated to the January year. Units hours and tenths. (Winter 1880 is missing as there are data only for February)
Spring   ditto, for March-April-May
Summer   ditto, June-July-August
Autumn   ditto, Sept, Oct, Nov