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Show HN: Weather API for non-commercial use

open-meteo.com

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Re: Show HN: Weather API for non-commercial use

#81

Post by kqr »

meteo-jeff wrote: post #5
Leftium wrote: post #3

I've investigated and tried several (free) weather API's for my web app: https://uw.leftium.com . Open-Meteo looks pretty good! The only thing that seems to be missing for me is precipitation probability. The weathercode is sort of a proxy for this... I'm also interested in sunrise/sunset times; direct_radiation is kind of a proxy for this. Kudos for providing optional historical data with the same API call for the f…

Thanks for your suggestions! I will add precipitation probability as soon as I include 14-day ensemble weather models. Deterministic whether models usually do not offer this directly. I also really like the 2 days historical access :) At some point I would like to add more, but the storage requirements skyrocket quickly. Not only in space, but also disk IO to perform in-place updates. For air quality data I want to a…

I wrote my top-level comment about missing ensemble forecasts[1] before I saw this answer of yours. Is the German weather service offering the public access to ensemble forecasts?

And, more critically, since I like your API: will you offer public access to ensemble forecasts? That would make my life better.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28520616

Re: Show HN: Weather API for non-commercial use

#82

Post by Leftium »

niatrecsa wrote: post #79
Leftium wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're referring to https://uw.leftium.com/ , tap the temperature in landscape mode ;) The app defaults to F because it gives the more "human" temperature range.

Is it possible to pass a query string parameter, for choosing either C or F? That would be fantastic for bookmarking, to save that extra click. :) ... and I'll add, awesome work. I love simple sites like this that are built well and are actually useful. Well done.

Great idea. It should be simple to add. Just need to connect the variable that controls C/F display with the logic that handles other query string parameters.

https://github.com/Leftium/ultra-weather

Re: Show HN: Weather API for non-commercial use

#83

Post by Ueland »

kqr wrote: post #80

One thing I'm missing from virtually every weather service is access to ensemble forecasts. Meteorologists internally deal in ensemble forecasts, but never, as far as I know, publish them. All public data has been condensed down to a single forecast. The ensemble forecast would -- I imagine -- give me an idea of the internal variability of the forecast for a single hour/day, which I could feed into my personal loss f…

I think you want to check out the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, they have a open free API with heaps of data, i think they have what you want. It powers yr.no which is used worldwide. https://api.met.no/

They have an endpoint to give you weather per hour now and going forward for any location in the world

Re: Show HN: Weather API for non-commercial use

#84

Post by pathseeker »

kqr wrote: post #80

One thing I'm missing from virtually every weather service is access to ensemble forecasts. Meteorologists internally deal in ensemble forecasts, but never, as far as I know, publish them. All public data has been condensed down to a single forecast. The ensemble forecast would -- I imagine -- give me an idea of the internal variability of the forecast for a single hour/day, which I could feed into my personal loss f…

didn't dark sky used to show these uncertainty ranges?

Re: Show HN: Weather API for non-commercial use

#85

Post by Ueland »

keithnz wrote: post #75

the non commercial use is interesting, because facts aren't copyrightable, in fact, weather data is often the exemplar case used for non copyrightable facts. It seems to me really easy to strip the data of this of this limitation through a proxy. Or is there a legal way to ripple the non commercial limitation?

Or you could use a service that lets you do whatever with the data for free, for example the Norwegian Meteorological Institute`s API. It powers Yr.no which is used worldwide. https://api.met.no/

Re: Show HN: Weather API for non-commercial use

#86

Post by phonon »

keithnz wrote: post #75

the non commercial use is interesting, because facts aren't copyrightable, in fact, weather data is often the exemplar case used for non copyrightable facts. It seems to me really easy to strip the data of this of this limitation through a proxy. Or is there a legal way to ripple the non commercial limitation?

How is a forecast a "fact"?

Re: Show HN: Weather API for non-commercial use

#87

Post by asaddhamani »

Does anyone know where I can get accurate weather data from remote locations (in India)?

I've been meaning to do some analysis on historical weather data to try and understand the impact of climate change, and all the open APIs I have tried have inaccurate data.

Data for Manali in India: https://api.open-meteo.com/v1/forecast?latitude=32.2432&long...

When the actual low is 12 celsius and high is 20 celsius, this shows low as 4 and high as 18.

We have https://dsp.imdpune.gov.in/ but they charge thousands of dollars for their records and require a lot of paperwork.

Re: Show HN: Weather API for non-commercial use

#88

Post by meteo-jeff »

kqr wrote: post #80

One thing I'm missing from virtually every weather service is access to ensemble forecasts. Meteorologists internally deal in ensemble forecasts, but never, as far as I know, publish them. All public data has been condensed down to a single forecast. The ensemble forecast would -- I imagine -- give me an idea of the internal variability of the forecast for a single hour/day, which I could feed into my personal loss f…

Including ensemble forecasts into Open-Meteo is already on my backlog. And yes, this will return those 90% confidence intervals.

Forecast variability is difficult to express. For example precipitation probability describes how likely rain is given the forecasted atmospheric conditions. Instead some people assume it is raining in 10% of an area.

Making use of probabilities it also tricky. If you run an ice cream shop, with high operation cost and there is a 50% probability of rain, do you open with the chance of barely anyone coming or keep closed to save cost?

Ensemble forecasts also take up a lot of disk space, because each model ensemble is stored individually.

Re: Show HN: Weather API for non-commercial use

#89

Post by zestyping »

dylan604 wrote: post #13

I like the UI generating the URL to send to the API vs just a PDF of all of the possible key/value pairs to generate manually. A little above&beyond for most APIs I've used personally. Its effort not lost on me.

Yeah, this is a really nice touch!

Re: Show HN: Weather API for non-commercial use

#90

Post by meteo-jeff »

arthurcolle wrote: post #69

You weather guys on here might also want to talk to the oikolab dude who posted on HN 9 months ago - I was thinking of incorporating weather data into my trading models so he graciously granted an API key but haven't had time much to use it viably as you kind of have to know what you're doing/how you intend to map trading outcomes and causal first-order effects on the climate grid to actual events that can be traded…

Thanks for the hint. I did not know them yet
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