2.7. METAR Data
- Description
Meteorological Aviation Routine Weather Report (METAR) is a format for observational weather data, which typically comes from airports or permanent observing stations around the world.
Iowa State University maintains an archive of METAR data: https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/request/download.phtml
Note: METAR data is also available via other sources (e.g., MADIS, NCEP prepbufr files); however, ISU provides a long archive and does not require an account.
- Recommended use
METAR data are commonly used for near-surface verification of standard meteorological variables, such as temperatures, dew point temperature, wind speed, visibility, precipitation, and precipitation type.
- File format
ASCII
- Location of data
- Access restrictions
None
- Spatial resolution, grid, or coverage
Point observations with locations spanning the globe
- Temporal resolution
Typical reporting time is hourly, but can vary based on weather event and other meteorological and non-meteorlogical reasons
- Starting and/or ending dates
Varies based on reporting station
- Data latency
Archive is updated in near-realtime (however, it is not operational and subject to downtime)
- Variables available
Air temperature, dew point temperature, relative humidity, heat index/wind chill, wind direction, wind speed, altimeter, sea level pressure, 1-h precipitation, visibility, wind gust, cloud coverage, cloud height level, present weather code(s), ice accretion, peak wind gust, peak wind direction, and peak wind time
- METplus Use Cases
Link to METplus Use Cases for this dataset.
- Keywords
Note
Current Dataset: VxDataMETAR
Note
Data Labels: DataTypePoint, DataLevelSurface, DataProviderISU, DataApplicationPrecipitation, DataApplicationShortRange, DataApplicationMediumRange