While the UK is famously grey and cloudy, it is not so in an even way. Exposure to sunlight (or the lack thereof) has measurable effects on human behaviour, physical and mental health, and economic activity. However, researchers and policymakers have had limited tools to study these effects at a local level. Existing approaches lack the spatial granularity needed to connect sunshine to the neighbourhood-level data that underpins most social and health research in the UK. 

Imago has released the Sun Probability Framework (SPF): a new open dataset that transforms cloud mask data from the Sentinel-2 satellite into a simple, interpretable measure of local cloud probability, aggregated to standard small-area geographies commonly used across UK administrative, census, and health datasets. 

What the dataset provides 

SPF delivers annual cloud probability estimates at the level of Lower-layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs) in England and Wales, Data Zones in Scotland, and Super Output Areas in Northern Ireland, the geographic units at which most UK social and health data is published. The current release covers 2024, and data for earlier years will be released in subsequent updates, enabling researchers to study temporal variation in local cloud conditions over time.   

Cloud probability estimates are derived from Sentinel-2 satellite imagery and corrected for systematic acquisition biases to ensure comparability across the UK. The dataset offers a spatial precision an order of magnitude finer than current gridded alternatives. Without requiring any GIS expertise to use, researchers can merge SPF estimates directly into existing datasets using standard area codes. 

The data show the annual cloud probability (%) across the United Kingdom for 2024.

Why it matters 

The lack of locally granular sunshine data has been a quiet but significant constraint on research into weather and wellbeing. Studies linking sunshine to mental health, consumer behaviour, and economic outcomes have typically relied on crude proxies; coarser averages or broad seasonal indicators are available. SPF makes it possible, for the first time, to ask whether two not very distant small areas experience meaningfully different cloud conditions, and to connect those differences to variation in health, behaviour, or economic outcomes measured at the same geographic level. 

Access the data 

The SPF dataset is freely available via our data catalogue and designed for integration with UK administrative, census, and survey data. Access the dataset here: https://data.imago.ac.uk/datasets/cloud-probability-statistics-per-small-area-in-2024-version-1-0

A technical document showing how SPF is calculated and the specific challenges it overcomes will be available soon. For access now, please get in touch.