About
Our Mission
Climate Explorer helps readers find, examine, and interpret meteorological observations and climate data from authoritative public sources. The site combines interactive explorers, practical guides, and evidence-led articles so that specialist datasets can be understood and checked without hiding their limitations.
The project is intended for researchers, data practitioners, students, and interested readers. It is an independent interpretation and visualization service, not an official meteorological authority, forecasting service, or source of weather warnings.
Publisher
Climate Explorer is an independently maintained climate-data and editorial project. It is maintained by a climatologist with experience in observational data processing, climate analysis, geospatial visualization, and the public presentation of meteorological information.
Articles and guides use the project byline Climate Explorer Team. This identifies the project responsible for the published work while allowing its maintainer to keep a private personal profile. Editorial questions, evidence, and correction requests remain attributable to Climate Explorer and can be submitted through the contact section.
Climate Explorer is not affiliated with NOAA, WMO, EUMETNET, DWD, Météo-France, JMA, IMGW, HungaroMet, or the other data providers referenced on the site. Linking to, transforming, or visualizing a provider’s public data does not imply that the provider endorses Climate Explorer.
About the Project
Climate Explorer maintains twelve interactive data explorers, each paired with a comprehensive user guide. The project provides access to historical and current observations from these authoritative sources:
- EuroMeteo – Near-real-time European meteorological observations (air temperature, precipitation, pressure, and wind speed) provided through MeteoGate (WIS 2.0 / E-SOH participating networks). Read the guide.
- OPERA – Official pan-European weather radar composites (Maximum Reflectivity DBZH, Instantaneous Rain Rate, and One-Hour Accumulated Rainfall) provided by the EUMETNET OPERA program via Météo-France and GeoSphere Austria. Read the guide.
- DWD – German meteorological observations published by Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD CDC), spanning 10-minute measurements to multi-annual climate summaries. Read the guide.
- Météo-France – French station observations published by Météo-France across metropolitan France and overseas departments at 6-minute, hourly, daily, and monthly resolutions. Read the guide.
- JMA – Japanese meteorological observations published by the Japan Meteorological Agency, covering automated AMeDAS and synoptic stations at 10-minute, hourly, daily, and monthly resolutions. Read the guide.
- IMGW – Polish meteorological observations published by the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management (IMGW-PIB) at hourly, daily, and monthly resolutions. Read the guide.
- HungaroMet – Hungarian meteorological observations published by HungaroMet (Hungarian Meteorological Service, formerly OMSZ), covering 10-minute, hourly, daily, monthly, century (1901–2025), and historical reference series. Read the guide.
- WMO Normals – Official 1991–2020 Climatological Standard Normals from the World Meteorological Organization, submitted by member states and stewarded via NOAA NCEI. Read the guide.
- WMO Climate – Monthly CLIMAT station observations from the global WMO observing network, compiled and quality-controlled by DWD. Read the guide.
- NOAA SSOD – Synoptic Summary of the Day (SSOD v2) from NOAA NCEI, providing UTC-aligned daily global observations across more than 9,000 land stations. Read the guide.
- NOAA GHCNh – Global Historical Climatology Network Hourly data from NOAA NCEI, supporting detailed sub-daily and synoptic weather analysis worldwide. Read the guide.
- NOAA GHCNm – Global Historical Climatology Network Monthly data from NOAA NCEI, providing long-term homogenized temperature and precipitation climate records worldwide. Read the guide.
| Explorer | Primary Provider | Geographic Scope | Observation Frequency | Key Variables |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EuroMeteo (Guide) | MeteoGate / E-SOH | Europe & neighboring regions | Near-real-time hourly | Temperature, precipitation, pressure, wind speed |
| OPERA (Guide) | EUMETNET OPERA | Pan-European radar domain | 5- to 15-minute intervals | Max reflectivity (DBZH), rain rate (RATE), accumulation (ACRR) |
| DWD (Guide) | Deutscher Wetterdienst | Germany | 10-min, hourly, daily, monthly, annual, normals | Temperature, precipitation, wind, solar radiation, pressure |
| Météo-France (Guide) | Météo-France | France (Metropolitan & Overseas) | 6-min, hourly, daily, monthly | Temperature, precipitation, wind, humidity, pressure |
| JMA (Guide) | Japan Meteorological Agency | Japan | 10-min, hourly, daily, monthly | Temperature, precipitation, wind speed, sunshine duration |
| IMGW (Guide) | IMGW-PIB | Poland | Hourly, daily, monthly | Temperature, precipitation, wind, pressure, snow cover |
| HungaroMet (Guide) | HungaroMet Nonprofit Zrt. | Hungary | 10-min, hourly, daily, monthly, century, historical | Temperature, precipitation, wind, humidity, radiation, soil temp |
| WMO Normals (Guide) | WMO / NOAA NCEI | Global | 1991–2020 monthly normals | Climatological baseline temperature, precipitation, sunshine |
| WMO Climate (Guide) | WMO / DWD CDC | Global | Monthly CLIMAT | Monthly mean temp, precipitation totals, pressure, sunshine |
| NOAA SSOD (Guide) | NOAA / NCEI | Global (>9,000 stations) | Daily (strict UTC calendar day) | Daily mean/max/min temp, precipitation, wind, pressure |
| NOAA GHCNh (Guide) | NOAA / NCEI | Global | Hourly & synoptic | Hourly temp, dew point, wind speed, pressure, precip |
| NOAA GHCNm (Guide) | NOAA / NCEI | Global | Monthly | Homogenized monthly temp, monthly precip totals |
Technology Stack
The dashboards and editorial platform are developed using modern data science and web technologies:
- Next.js & React – Interactive frontend applications for real-time observation mapping and radar composite visualization
- Shiny – Analytical web applications for multi-resolution station exploration and tabular filtering
- Quarto – Scientific publishing system for documentation, dataset user guides, and reproducible articles
- MapLibre GL JS – Accelerated vector tile mapping and WebGL geospatial rendering
- Plotly & Recharts – Dynamic meteorological charts and interactive time-series visualizations
- Node.js & DuckDB – High-performance analytical data pipelines, edge computing, and metadata catalog services
Data Sources & Stewardship
The explorers and articles primarily use data and documentation published by official meteorological services and international scientific programmes:
- NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)
- NOAA Synoptic Summary of the Day (SSOD)
- NOAA Global Historical Climatology Network Hourly (GHCNh)
- NOAA Global Historical Climatology Network Monthly (GHCNm)
- NOAA WMO Climate Normals Archive
- Deutscher Wetterdienst Open Data (DWD CDC)
- DWD Global CLIMAT Observations
- Météo-France Open Data Portal
- Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA)
- Institute of Meteorology and Water Management (IMGW-PIB)
- HungaroMet Hungarian Meteorological Service Open Data
- MeteoGate (EUMETNET WIS 2.0 / E-SOH)
- EUMETNET OPERA Radar Network
- World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Normals
- WMO OSCAR/Surface Observing Systems
- GeoSphere Austria Open Data
- Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S / ECMWF)
- KNMI Open Data (Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute)
- EuroMeteo MeteoGate Historical Archive
Quality Control and Data Limitations
Climate Explorer documents the specific quality-control practices and limitations of each dataset:
- Upstream QC Retention: Official provider quality flags (such as NOAA quality flags, DWD quality level codes, or JMA data quality indicators) are preserved and displayed where available in the source data.
- Supplementary Sanity Checks: The platform implements non-destructive sanity filtering—such as stripping negative values for physically non-negative variables (precipitation, wind speed, relative humidity, solar radiation) and checking relational consistency—to prevent transmission sentinels (such as
-999or-999.0) from distorting visualizations. - Temporal Alignment: Calendar-day definitions differ across networks. NOAA SSOD strictly synchronizes observations to the 24-hour UTC calendar day (00:00 to 24:00 UTC), while national services typically aggregate daily observations according to national climatological reporting days (often 06:00 to 06:00 UTC or local civil time). These distinctions are documented in the corresponding user guides.
Terms of Use and Attribution
Meteorological observations published on Climate Explorer are distributed in accordance with public open-data licenses and open-access mandates, including Creative Commons licenses (e.g., CC BY 4.0), national Open Government Licenses (such as France’s Licence Ouverte and DWD’s GeoNutzV), and WMO Resolution 40 / WMO Unified Data Policy (Resolution 1). Access through Climate Explorer does not alter or replace the originating provider’s licence. Users redistributing source observations should cite the originating national or international meteorological service.
Editorial Responsibility
Climate Explorer is responsible for:
- selecting and documenting the public datasets used by the site;
- implementing data ingestion, format harmonization, unit conversion, and visualization workflows;
- checking derived values, labels, dates, units, station identifiers, and reference periods before publication;
- distinguishing direct observations from calculations and editorial interpretation;
- documenting material uncertainty, missing data, provisional values, and spatial or temporal limitations; and
- maintaining the explorers, guides, articles, source links, and correction record.
Official data providers remain responsible for their original observations, metadata, upstream validation, and subsequent revisions.
How Content Is Prepared
Climate Explorer follows a documented, source-first workflow:
- Source selection. Preference is given to official meteorological services, WMO programmes, NOAA/NCEI, EUMETNET, and clearly documented public datasets.
- Data handling. Source formats may be harmonized for display. Missing values, units, quality flags, temporal resolution, and update timing are treated according to the documentation of each dataset rather than through one universal rule.
- Verification. Material values and claims are checked against the cited source, the stated period and variable, and any reproducible calculation used in the article.
- Interpretation. Weather observations, climate context, calculated results, and broader inference are kept distinct. A station result is not presented as representative of a wider region without supporting evidence.
- Presentation. Charts and articles use measured language, visible source attribution, plain-language explanations, and relevant limitations. Interactive displays are designed for exploration and should not replace official warnings or operational decisions.
Climate Explorer may apply documented checks for missing values, impossible values, duplicate records, or format inconsistencies. These checks supplement rather than replace the quality-control procedures of the originating data provider. Data can be provisional, incomplete, delayed, or corrected upstream.
Corrections and Updates
Readers are encouraged to report a suspected factual, data, methodological, attribution, or accessibility error through the contact section. A useful report includes the page URL, the statement or graphic concerned, and a link or citation supporting the correction.
Substantive corrections are checked against the source data or documentation before publication. When a change affects a result or its interpretation, Climate Explorer updates the page’s modification date and, where useful to readers, adds a visible correction or update note. Minor typographical or formatting fixes may be made without a separate notice. Upstream dataset revisions are incorporated when they materially change a published result and the revised data become available to the project.
Editorial Independence and Support
Climate Explorer’s primary purpose is public access to climate-data tools, documentation, and analysis. Financial support, sponsorship, consulting, or collaboration does not give an outside party control over scientific conclusions or corrections. Any relationship that materially contributes to a specific piece of content will be disclosed on that page.
Consulting & Custom Climate Solutions
Climate Explorer offers specialized technical consulting and end-to-end data development services for academic institutions, public bodies, and industry partners working with environmental and meteorological data:
- Automated Meteorological Pipelines: Production-grade ingestion, quality-control filtering, harmonization, and format conversion across WIS 2.0 / E-SOH, NetCDF, GeoZarr, and Apache Parquet.
- Custom Interactive Dashboards & Web Apps: High-performance, responsive climate intelligence applications, interactive dashboards, and geospatial interfaces built with Next.js, React, Node.js, DuckDB, Shiny, Python FastAPI, and MapLibre GL JS.
- Climatological Analyses: Specialized historical observational analyses, baseline normal calculations, extreme event characterizations, and independent validation against authoritative reference standards.
To explore project collaborations, technical consulting, or custom climate applications, please reach out via the contact section.
Custom Climate Dashboards & Data Pipelines
Climate Explorer engineers custom meteorological solutions tailored to research institutions, public agencies, and enterprise operations. We build high-performance web applications and interactive dashboards using Next.js, React, Node.js, DuckDB, Shiny, and Python FastAPI, alongside automated data scraping & ingestion pipelines, historical observation archives, and specialized spatial homogenization & extreme-event analyses.
Sponsorships & Industry Partnerships
Organizations supporting open climate science and environmental monitoring can enquire about sponsorship opportunities in these areas:
- Weather Hardware & Sensor Manufacturers: Surface observation stations, automated weather stations, radar equipment, and environmental sensor networks.
- AgTech Platforms: Weather-resilient agricultural decision support systems, crop health monitoring, and microclimate analytics.
- Renewable Energy Platforms: Solar and wind resource modeling, extreme weather risk evaluation, and meteorological grid integration.
- Environmental & Scientific Computing: Cloud infrastructure providers, high-performance geospatial computing platforms, and specialized analytics software.
Sponsorships are designed to provide discreet, context-relevant brand visibility while strictly preserving Climate Explorer’s editorial independence and scientific integrity. To inquire about available sponsorship packages and rates, please submit an inquiry through our contact form or email us directly at climateexplorer.app@gmail.com.
Contact
For questions, suggestions, correction requests, or collaboration inquiries, please use the form below.
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