This is a collection of open source UK and global environmental datasets.

These datasets are free to use and organised by topic. This page will be updated periodically, and look out for data analysis projects using these datasets!

The following datasets are mainly tabular using file types .csv and .xlsx, making them perfect for beginner and intermediate data analysis projects. Useful tools include Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Python, R, Jupyter Notebook, Power BI and Tableau.

Climate

World Bank - Climate Change Indicators https://data.worldbank.org/topic/climate-change

NOAA - Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/land-based-station/global-historical-climatology-network-daily

NOAA - Climate Data Online (CDO) https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/cdo-web/

Oceans and Water

NRFA - Catchment Rainfall https://nrfa.ceh.ac.uk/data/about-data/rainfall-data/catchment-rainfall

OSPO - Sea Surface Temperature https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/products/ocean/sst.html

Atmosphere

ONS - Estimates of greenhouse gas emissions https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/environmentalaccounts/datasets/experimentalestimatesofquarterlygreenhousegasemissions

DEFRA - UK Air Quality Data Catalogue https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/data/data-catalogue

OpenAQ - World Air Quality https://public.opendatasoft.com/explore/assets/openaq/view/

Our World in Data - CO₂ Emissions by Country https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions

EEA - Net greenhouse gas emissions https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/datahub/featured-data/statistical-data/datahubitem-view/d22b842a-53f7-4c63-aa94-74d5fa1f4d40

Biodiversity

Natural England - Designated Sites (ArcGIS - map) https://naturalengland-defra.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/Defra::sites-of-special-scientific-interest-england/about

World Resource Institute - Global Forest Watch https://www.globalforestwatch.org/

Other

ONS - Energy Use: Total https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/environmentalaccounts/datasets/ukenvironmentalaccountstotalenergyconsumptionbyindustry

Our World in Data - Carbon Footprint of Food Production (with interactive visualisations) https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food#explore-data-on-the-environmental-impacts-of-food

NCEI - Historical Wildfires https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/paleoclimatology/fire-history

IEA - Renewable Energy Progress Tracker https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-tools/renewable-energy-progress-tracker

Protected Areas (includes other countries) https://www.protectedplanet.net/country/GBR

Other data types

These datsets are specialised file types, such as GeoTIFF, Shapefile, and NetCDF. For more information on these file types and how to use them, check our our Understanding Environmental Data Beginner`s Guide

CEH - UK Land Cover Map (GB) (GeoTIFF (.tif)- Raster Data) https://www.ceh.ac.uk/data/ukceh-land-cover-maps

Global Country Boundaries (Shapefile (.shp) - GeoJSON Vector Data) https://www.geoboundaries.org/

Global Gridded Temperature Anomalies (NetCDF (.nc)) https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/

NASA MODIS Satellite Data (HDF (.hdf) - Remote Sensing/Earth Observation) https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/data/instruments/modis#:~:text=MODIS%20products%20have%20two%20sources,attributes%20pertaining%20to%20the%20granule.

UK Groundwater Vulnerability Map (GeoTIFF (.tif)) https://www.bgs.ac.uk/datasets/groundwater-vulnerability-data/