Modelled British river water temperatures (1982-2011)

Its construction incorporates geographical features, daily mean air and sea temperatures, and freshwater temperature measurements. Its timespan captures general warming trends (+0.22 ⁰C/decade, lower for lakes and coasts), identifies April as the fastest-warming month (+0.63 ⁰C/decade), and shows that most rivers spend on average ever longer at temperatures exceeding 10 ⁰C. Plotted geographically, local warming rates delineate seasonally- and monthly-varying regions with distinct thermal properties, including exceptional warming in the Scottish Highlands (in April and September) and pervasive cooling episodes in December throughout Britain and in July in the southwest (in Wales, Cornwall, Devon, and Dorset).

This dataset provides a river segments database, time series per segment, two data visualisation utilities, and auxiliary files.