This dataset presents the suitable area(s) for very high-resolution optical satellite imagery to monitor live and stranded cetaceans around the UK and UK Overseas Territories, based on five-year monthly median 'Total Cloud Cover' and '10m Wind Speed' ERA5 global reanalysis data. Monitoring live and stranded cetaceans can be expensive and logistically challenging resulting in knowledge gaps. Very high-resolution (VHR) optical satellites are considered a potential solution to addressing some of these gaps. Despite success at detecting live and stranded cetaceans, satellites have only been trialled on restricted spatial and temporal scales. We established a framework for assessing the feasibility of using VHR optical satellite-based monitoring of cetaceans at high temporal frequency and local to global scales, focusing on the UK and UK Overseas Territories as a case study. We assessed the primary environmental conditions necessary for successful application of this technology: cloud cover and wind speed. Here we present the spatial feasibility of satellite monitoring around the UK, and the Caribbean and the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), based on five-year (2018-2022) monthly median 'Total Cloud Cover' and '10m Wind Speed' ERA5 global reanalysis data. The data are .tif format depicting the five-year (2018-2022) monthly median of the respective environmental variable, which is subject to a user defined threshold to generate vector (polygon shapefile) format feasibility maps, depicting the 'suitable area(s)' mapped to the study area. For live cetacean monitoring, 'suitable area(s)' delineate where both five year monthly average environmental variables met the predefined threshold over open water, and for stranded cetaceans 'Total Cloud Cover' only along the coastline (2km either side of the coastline). The suitable areas are merged (and dissolved) for projects interested in monitoring both live and stranded cetaceans, which can be extended to include monitoring of floating dead cetaceans. This research has been supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) through a SENSE CDT studentship (grant no. NE/T00939X/1) and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee.

Ice Nucleating Particle concentrations were measured by exposing polycarbonate filters for 48 hours at East Beach, Rothera on the Antarctic peninsula as part of the Southern Ocean Clouds (SOC) project. The filters were stored and shipped back to the British Antarctic Survey at -20 C, where they were analysed using the offline, wash-off filter method following the Vali (1971) methodology and using a droplet freezing array set-up similar to the one described by Budke and Koop (2015). The dataset presented here is from filters which were collected between the 4th of February 2023 13:50 UTC and the 22nd of February 2023 13:50 UTC: which covers the first SOC special observing period during which aircraft measurements of clouds and aerosol were conducted around Rothera station. The Ice Nucleating Particle concentrations are used to derive a parameterisation for INP concentrations as a function of temperature which is subsequently used to investigate how processes in mixed-phase clouds (INP and droplet number concentration and the spatial distribution of liquid and ice) are represented in the Met Office Unified Model (MetUM); and the sensitivity of the MetUM to changes in these processes and resulting cloud radiative effect. The Southern Ocean Clouds was supported by NERC as part of the CloudSense Programme and it was funded by the project grant number NE/T006404/1.