A New Chapter for Meteostat
Today, a new chapter begins for the Meteostat project. With the release of our updated product portfolio we are laying the foundation for the project’s next growth wave. The update includes version 2 of our API and an updated user interface for the website.
Furthermore, we are rolling out a new feature which allows both developers and users of our website to access historical weather and climate data for any geographic location. We call it point data.
Point data is an incredible opportunity for Meteostat, as it allows even more people to consume weather statistics in a more feasible way. But it is also a huge challenge for a relatively small initiative like Meteostat. Building a weather model that provides high-quality interpolations is not a task you can accomplish by investing a few hours after work. It takes a team of multiple people who are working on the project full-time — or an ambitious team of open source developers.
I’m currently the only one who is working on Meteostat and it has been an incredible road so far. I started with a small project that grew into a platform for historical meteorological data. The Meteostat API is providing free climate data for science, education and businesses. By this time, Meteostat is partnering with one of the coolest citizen science projects in Germany and during the COVID-19 pandemic, Meteostat data was used by many scientists and public initiatives to support research.
It is passion that is driving me to sacrifice much of my spare time for the project. But as the public interest is growing I will need to approach the next steps in a different way. Therefore, I’m actively looking for people who are willing to invest time, passion or money into Meteostat and its vision.
I’ll need to prepare a few things, so the further development can happen in an open source environment. More details about how we can grow Meteostat together will be shared in a follow-up article in the upcoming days.
Version 1 of the Meteostat API will be available for at least six more months. A migration tutorial will be published soon. If you are already using version 1 of the API, please sign up for a new account.
Meteostat is a private initiative and we cannot guarantee that all features and API endpoints are free of bugs. Moreover, keep in mind that point data is still an experimental feature. Some model data might be inaccurate and the output is by no means a substitute for actual observations.
Please get in touch via Twitter or Slack if you are running into an issue. The new API documentation is available here.
I’m really grateful for all the appreciation and trust that people are putting into the project. Thank you very much!