Daily sunshine hours observed on 12th May 2014 at 03xxx stations (141 reports).
Date (00Z D to 24Z D)
-1 day
+1 day
Plot hours Plot % of theoretical max
UK only UK & ROI
Highest 10
Stornoway Airport (15 m, WMO)14.5 hours
Strathy East (68 m, CS)14.4 hours
Tain Range (4 m, DRV)14.4 hours
Fair Isle (57 m, CS)14.3 hours
Colonsay: Homefield (9 m, CS)13.0 hours
Weymouth, Wyke Regis (33 m, CS)12.8 hours
Kinloss (5 m, WMO)11.8 hours
Orkney: Loch Of Hundland (28 m, CS)11.8 hours
Filton (59 m, WMO)11.1 hours
Kirkwall (26 m, WMO)11.0 hours

Lowest 10
Edinburgh, Gogarbank (57 m, WMO)0.0 hours
Morpeth, Cockle Park (95 m, WMO)0.0 hours
Edinburgh, Royal Botanic Garden No 2 (28 m, CS)0.0 hours
Ardtalnaig (130 m, CS)0.0 hours
Glasgow, Bishopton (59 m, WMO)0.3 hours
Drummond Castle (113 m, CS)0.3 hours
Eskdalemuir (236 m, WMO)0.7 hours
Copley (253 m, CS)0.8 hours
Aldergrove (63 m, WMO)0.9 hours
Brampton No 3 (117 m, CS)1.1 hours

Average Sun = 5.8 hours

*MIDAS UK data available from 1887
*SYNOP data available from 2000
*Background satellite imagery from 25/02/2000

Data courtesy of MetOffice and OGIMET
OpenMIDAS Data - Met Office (2021): MIDAS Open: UK daily temperature data, v202107. NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis, 08 September 2021.


Methods for measuring sunshine have changed over time, older records and some climate sites today will use a Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder, whereas nowadays the majority of measurements will be taken using a pyrheliometer and threshold of 120 W/m^2 for sunshine. The instrumentation used is indicated by the letters in the table - WMO means a pyrheliometer was used, CS means a Campbell-Stokes recorder was used, and S means that the value was extracted from the SYNOP report (most likely to be a pyrheliometer measurement but not for certain). Clicking on an icon in the map will display a popup which also contains this information.

It is possible to convert the newer pyrheliometer measurements to a Campbell-Stokes equivalent for a fairer comparison across time, which is done for climatological purposes, and is a function which I may add to this page at some point.



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