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Met Office

Volume 507: debated on Thursday 11 March 2010

To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills with reference to page 27 of the document Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government, what underlying data for weather forecasts will be released for free download and reuse by April 2010. (321358)

I have been asked to reply.

The underlying data that have been made available are detailed in the following table. These data can be downloaded for free from the Met Office website at the following link:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/pws/invent/weathermap/

As outlined in ‘Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government', the Met Office has also released a free iPhone application to access weather data and a widget that enables other websites to deploy Met Office supplied weather information.

Category

Data details

Weather warnings

Type, validity period, risk and severity for all current valid warnings issued by the Met Office

Weather

For all UK weather stations for which an observation or a forecast is available:

Site name

Latitude

Longitude

Wind direction

Wind speed

Wind gust

Weather type (as numerical code, decode provided on website)

Visibility

Temperature

Pressure—observed values only

Pressure tendency (e.g. “Rising”)—observed values only

Mountain and leisure areas

For Mountain areas:

For the current day (day zero): weather hazards including severity, fell top conditions, weather forecast including precipitation probabilities

For the next day (day one): weather forecast

For days two and three: weather outlook For Leisure areas: a textual overview of the current day's weather

Pressure

Forecast Pressure for the entire UK area at various time frames

Ultra Violet

Forecast UV values for the current day through to day four for every forecast location in the UK