This dataset consists of hourly lake temperature, air temperature, solar irradiance and wind speed data from an automatic water monitoring buoy on Esthwaite Water, a lake in the North West of England. The lake temperatures are measured in various depths of the lake (see supporting documentation). Measurements were taken every 4 minutes and calculated as hourly averages. The data were collected by the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology between 2008 and 2011 inclusive. This dataset has been used in various publications, please see supporting documentation for more detail.