Whither Met Office openness

by Jack Hughes on March 28, 2008

I’m currently in the process of putting together a unit test for an open source project. I wanted to use real met office temperature data, ideally from around York or Leeds.

I emailed the met office to enquire where I could find the data I require. The met office, being a publicly funded body, I naturally assumed the data would be publicly available.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Here’s the reply I received:

All free information regarding data can be found at the following webpages http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/index.html

If you wish to purchase data please be aware that it would be a chargable service with data quotations starting from £250+VAT

The free information is a set of monthly averages for temperature, sunlight and rainfall going back to 1998. Why is data collected by a publicly funded body not freely available? Think of the innovation that could be unleashed in data visualisation if the raw data were set free.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Share and Enjoy:
  • del.icio.us
  • Twitter

Related posts:

  1. Whither Met Office openness update
  2. PowerTime PowerShell walk through
  3. Hurrah! Some real data to play with
  4. A review of 2006 at OPENXTRA

{ 2 trackbacks }

Whither Met Office openness update
May 6, 2008 at 11:38 AM
Off Topic: Hurrah! Some real data to play with
May 16, 2008 at 3:01 PM

{ 0 comments… add one now }

Leave a Comment

Previous post:

Next post: