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I recently came across a couple of good websites for weather data and forecasting links which I thought I’d share. This post isn’t for the big resource sites, we’ll be covering all of those in specific posts over time.

http://weatherfaqs.org.uk/

Weather FAQs is, not surprisingly, a set of frequently asked questions for the newsgroup uk.sci.weather. The resources here are mainly for people who are interesting in the analysis and forecasting of weather data. It covers such subjects as how to set up a weather station, comparison of weather forecasting models and a useful glossary of terms. Of course it also points you towards the newsgroup itself (here is some information about how to access newsgroups) where you can read previous threads and ask your questions.

http://www.worldclimate.com/

World Climate is a handy, simple website that contains archive information for many locations around the world that it uses to provide typical weather information for. So you enter the city name and find out what average rainfalls and temperature are over time.

http://www.greatweather.co.uk/

Ant Veal’s Great Weather site is… great! It’s a bit busy to look at, but has a wealth of links to current and forecast data around the world. I’m sure you’ll find some data sources here that you never knew of before.

Hello!

The whole aim for 4caster.net is to discuss weather forecasting… data, tools, applications and services to better be able to use this information to predict or report on the weather.

There are plenty of sources of information out there, from expensive and thorough to free and bleeding edge! As I come across or investigate a new source I’ll post it here. Also if you have any recommendations or advice then please let me know!

My overall goal? As well as being a good centralised source of information, I want to use this data myself to build an application that measures the long term accuracy of weather forecasting from a variety of sources. At the moment we’re in the 21st century but it seems that the only failsafe way to predict the weather is to go outside and look up. I’d like to measure our improvements in forecasting as lessons are learnt about the climate and our tools for prediction improve.

Pete