This dataset consists of hourly lake temperature, air temperature, solar irradiance and wind speed data from an automatic water monitoring buoy on Bassenthwaite Lake, 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. Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/ce702019-77fe-4ca7-b1d4-a7e4eb6e40c0