England River Flow Dataset
Monthly and annual mean river flow for long-record gauging stations in England, aggregated from the Environment Agency’s quality-controlled daily record. The Thames at Kingston runs from October 1883.
Methodology
Daily mean flows are read from the Environment Agency Hydrology Data Explorer and aggregated by Hydrionis to monthly means, then to annual means from those monthly values rather than from daily values directly — averaging days would weight a year toward its best-observed months. A month is published only where readings covering at least 80% of its days passed the Environment Agency’s quality control; readings flagged Suspect, Missing or Unchecked are excluded and counted. Only stations whose record opens before 1970 are ingested, because the value of this dataset is depth of history.
What this dataset cannot tell you
Coverage
| Subjects | English gauging stations with a record opening before 1970 — 356 held |
|---|---|
| Period | 1879–2026 |
| Units | m³/s |
| Update cadence | Monthly |
| Identifier | england-river-flow v1.0.0 |
Fields
Data dictionary →Every metric this dataset carries, with the unit it is stored in and the geography level it is reported at. Full definitions are in the data dictionary.
| Identifier | Field | Unit | Reported at |
|---|---|---|---|
river-flow-mean | Mean river flow | m³/s | river-gauge |
river-flow-monthly-mean | Mean monthly river flow | m³/s | river-gauge |
Rights and access
Licence position
Open with attribution. Derivative use true; redistribution true; commercial reuse true.
Attribution required:
- Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Permitted uses
- Public display
- Derived analysis
- API delivery
- Bulk download
- Commercial use
Available to: Public, Developer, Research, Professional, Enterprise. These follow from the rights of the contributing publishers, not from a Hydrionis pricing decision — no access tier can widen what a publisher withheld.
Contributing sources
Suggested citation
Hydrionis (2026), England River Flow Dataset, version 1.0.0. Retrieved from https://hydrionis.com/data/datasets/england-river-flow/
Cite the version. Hydrionis datasets change as publishers release and as methods are revised, and a citation without a version cannot be checked later.
Changelog
Version 1.0.0 — 2026-08-24
First release.
Additions
- Monthly and annual mean flow for 356 long-record English gauging stations.
Getting the data
Machine-readable metadata for this dataset is at /api/v1/datasets/england-river-flow.json. For bulk extracts, higher-volume access or commercial licensing, see data enquiries.