Daily sunshine hours observed on 31st March 2016 at 03xxx stations (136 reports).
Date (00Z D to 24Z D)
-1 day
+1 day
Plot hours Plot % of theoretical max
UK only UK & ROI
Highest 10
Bude (15 m, WMO)12.3 hours
Holbeach No 2 (3 m, DRV)12.2 hours
St Athan (49 m, WMO)12.1 hours
Morecambe No 2 (7 m, WMO)11.7 hours
Valley (10 m, WMO)11.6 hours
Inverbervie No 2 (134 m, DRV)11.5 hours
Kirkwall (26 m, WMO)11.4 hours
Dundrennan (113 m, DRV)11.3 hours
Cardinham, Bodmin (200 m, DRV)11.3 hours
Lyneham (145 m, WMO)11.2 hours

Lowest 10
Strathallan Airfield (35 m, DRV)2.2 hours
Dunbar (23 m, CS)3.2 hours
Braemar No 2 (327 m, DRV)3.8 hours
Edinburgh, Gogarbank (57 m, WMO)3.9 hours
Kew Gardens (6 m, DRV)4.5 hours
Woburn (89 m, DRV)4.5 hours
Winterbourne No2 (140 m, DRV)4.6 hours
Durham (102 m, DRV)4.6 hours
Eastbourne (15 m, CS)4.7 hours
Drummond Castle (113 m, CS)4.9 hours

Average Sun = 8.3 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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