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Of english speaking countries, we're missing the UK and New Zealand (for its population we get a decent number of posters from there).
What's the interest level in making this thread a sticky?
As I mentioned in my OP, the link goes to a worldwide map. UK, New Zealand, and any small country you can think of is on there. I was able to get climate info from some city in Cameroon.
As I mentioned in my OP, the link goes to a worldwide map. UK, New Zealand, and any small country you can think of is on there. I was able to get climate info from some city in Cameroon.
Yes, but I thought it'd nice to have sources available to get data without having to wait for it to be e-mailed you for the more commonly accessed countries.
Made this thread a sticky. DM me if you have any comments / suggestions.
In Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has free access to climate data for every station in the country, with various years selectable (e.g. 1960-1990, 1980-2010), in addition to the entire history for the station. The datasets contain everything from average temps to record highs/lows, 9am-3pm temps, average cloud cover, sunshine hours, humidity, average wind speeds, record wind speeds, dewpoint, rain days for both 0.2mm and 1mm cutoffs, cloudy/clear days and the list goes on. They also have climate maps for things like cloud cover, average temps, sunshine hours, temp/rainfall anomalies, thunderstorm days, solar radiation and so on, and these can be selected for daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal, or for a certain time period during a certain year etc.
The BOM provides a very comprehensive data set for every weather station in Australia which can be accessed by anyone for free. It also provides easy to access forecasts and current observations, monthly obs etc both via a clickable map and via a list for hundreds of locations, each catagorised by state and city. It is actually a quite exceptional service. Looking at New Zealand's Metservice is very crude and non user-friendly in comparison for example.
Last edited by Galaxyman; 10-07-2012 at 07:00 AM..
I think it'd be a good idea to keep this thread easy to access.
As for British weather records, I am lucky in that my the person who runs my local site (Phillip Eden, one of the most famous climatologists in the country) puts the archive (and a couple of others) up here: http://www.weather-uk.com/hampstead/data.htm . Most others are not so lucky.
The Met Office site has a fair amount of information here for averages/historical information (usually month-by-month), but the sites they use are fairly random - have a look at some of these places which it gives averages for and see how many are tiny villages you've probably never heard of and how many of the major cities are not on there! One good thing on the Met Office site is the rankings of the Central England Temperature (the average taken from three English weather stations: one in the south-east, one in the west, and one in the north) for every month since 1659, which shows how most of our 'cold' months these days wouldn't have been remotely cold to our 17th/18th-century ancestors There are similar rainfall/sunshine tables on there, but they don't go back so far.
The most comprehensive, easiest-to-access weather archive sites seem to be the Canadian/Australian ones from my experience, though I do like the sheer amount of statistics on the American one (i.e. standard deviation, first/last frost dates, records for each date in the year etc) - wish we had that!
I am disappointed with the Met Office - they only publish averages for a certain number of stations, and virtually nothing for big cities (the exception being Sheffield). London and Manchester only have airport averages. They closed down most of the urban stations across the country, I have no idea why.
It's also a shame they do not have an average date for first frost, last frost, first snowfall, last snowfall, snow lying days etc. Surely they have this information?
I am disappointed with the Met Office - they only publish averages for a certain number of stations, and virtually nothing for big cities (the exception being Sheffield). London and Manchester only have airport averages. They closed down most of the urban stations across the country, I have no idea why.
It's also a shame they do not have an average date for first frost, last frost, first snowfall, last snowfall, snow lying days etc. Surely they have this information?
I have definitely seen first frost and snow lying days information quoted in newspaper columns so it is kept, but I have no idea why it's not on the Met Office site.
I've just spent a good half an hour browsing through this site though: climate - Graph - Europe - WeatherOnline which has plenty of info on averages for temperature, sunshine, precip (including some interesting snowfall info, though not for British locations as far as I could see). It's got a good selection of places from all over the world, though the data is patchy in places - I just found out that a November I experienced in Germany only had 18 sun hours, though at the time I was too busy admiring the fog to notice how little sun there was.
In Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has free access to climate data for every station in the country, with various years selectable (e.g. 1960-1990, 1980-2010), in addition to the entire history for the station. The datasets contain everything from average temps to record highs/lows, 9am-3pm temps, average cloud cover, sunshine hours, humidity, average wind speeds, record wind speeds, dewpoint, rain days for both 0.2mm and 1mm cutoffs, cloudy/clear days and the list goes on. They also have climate maps for things like cloud cover, average temps, sunshine hours, temp/rainfall anomalies, thunderstorm days, solar radiation and so on, and these can be selected for daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal, or for a certain time period during a certain year etc.
The BOM provides a very comprehensive data set for every weather station in Australia which can be accessed by anyone for free. It also provides easy to access forecasts and current observations, monthly obs etc both via a clickable map and via a list for hundreds of locations, each catagorised by state and city. It is actually a quite exceptional service. Looking at New Zealand's Metservice is very crude and non user-friendly in comparison for example.
Very true. The BOM have an excellent easy to use site. Same for Canada. Here in the US I get confused due to all the different govt agencies like NOS, NWS, NOAA, Regional Climate offices, State Climate offices, etc. etc. I usually just stick with NOAA (NWS).
New Zealand on the other hand, seemed really minimal and not user friendly at all. I don't even bother with it.
Met Office isn't too bad, just not very comprehensive for the UK. I thought with the history there it would be, since weather and agriculture go hand in hand. Maybe agriculture is not as big there as in Australia/US and that is why they don't provide info on frost dates, etc.
Btw, you can use the site the OP listed to get daily data of a station for the length of a station's history, at least for US sites. Choose "Data Search" type the name or code* and choose Daily GHCND. Read the documentation, it's hard to understand the data file, otherwise. I suggest turning off the flags, as most of them aren't useful but make the file too big. I choose a csv file which can opened easily in a spreadsheet program.
*Use this map to get a station code for US sites. Click on state, then station. Code is a six digit number next to the name.
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Average Weather Charts
There are similar rainfall/sunshine tables on there, but they don't go back so far.
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